


Sun Spots

by BluCheeto



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Also Big Brother PoeRey, Alternate Universe - Ben Solo Doesn't Turn to the Dark Side, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Coruscant, F/M, Force Bond, Growing Up Together, Jedi Rey, Multi, No really the slowest slow burn I'm so sorry, ReyBen, Slow Burn, Young Ben Solo, Young Rey, Young!ReyBen, and Best Friends For Life FinnRey, excessive use of 'kriff'
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-03-20 05:46:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 39,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13711131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BluCheeto/pseuds/BluCheeto
Summary: AU where Rey's Force abilities wake up a LOT sooner--when she's 6.The Organa-Solo family takes her in to live with them on Coruscant, eager to keep her and Ben hidden and safe from the dark forces that seek to corrupt their light. (Though they're a much tougher cookie to crack, when they have each other.)Essentially just a truck-load of Young!ReyBen fluff, that will eventually grow into ReyBen romance.





	1. Chapter 1

Leia is pushing 40 and _tired_. In Galactic City, every day is a new chaos of politics and a mad scramble for influence. It’s as overwhelming as it is rewarding, what she does, and her only balm waits for her behind the doors of Cantham House, in the residential suite she shares with her husband and son.  
  
As she sheds her formal robes and heads into the main room, he looks up from his holobooks to greet her.  
  
Her son is 16, now, but his eyes haven't changed since he was a toddler. Han’s always said Ben got them from her, but she knows hers are too dark—it’s his father’s warm hazel that tempers the searing, rich brown of Ben Solo’s eyes.

As he turns back to his schoolwork, Leia watches him a while. Ben is so quiet, tonight. Leia has noticed he’s grown more and more distant. More petulant—his fuse shorter than his mother’s on a good day, mouth running off faster than his father’s on worse days. 

She senses a darkening inside him.

Leia isn’t sure whether or not to take her brother up on his offer. Teaching Ben to take control over his gifts with the help of his Jedi Master uncle could only be a good thing, she’s sure. And a part of her is tempted. But a larger part is as stubborn as ever to keep him close.

She thinks it might work; that she might repel the darkness by wrapping him up in her own, gritty little light. She knows there’s a dark force out there, somewhere, reaching for him. Gunning for new Skywalker blood to grip in it’s twisted claws.

She worries. She _constantly_ worries that her light will not be enough.

Leia runs a tired hand through her son’s hair. She feels him lean into the gesture--so slightly it might be her imagination--and for now, she sighs.

 

* * *

 

It’s only a few days later that she feels a sudden shift in the force--a strong ripple of light that momentarily blinds her in the middle of a union meeting.

It’s dizzying. Immediately, Leia worries for Ben. If it could disorient a mere force sensitive, it had to have hit her son like a _freighter_.

She excuses herself to her office and comms her brother.  
  
“A child’s awakening in the force,” is his best sparkly-eyed guess over the holocron. Leia can hear a few stray shouts and laughter somewhere in the background. Of course _. His students would’ve felt it too_ , she thinks. “A strong awakening.”

“A strong _light_.” Leia stresses.

“ _Very_ strong....” Luke trails off, his eyes wandering. She can feel the breadth of her brother’s curiosity from systems away. “Ideally, I would leave tonight to find them-”

“‘ _Ideally_ ’?”  
  
He sighs. “There’s a darkness, Leia. It’s permeated the dreams of some of my older students-”

“The same darkness we sense in Ben.”   
  
“The same,” he sighs. “And I'm-” he cuts himself off to run a hand through his greying beard, leaning closer to the holo in an effort to further hush his tone. “-Hesitant to leave them. Any of them. Even with Ashoka here...it’s a fragile time.” Leia watches the cogs turn behind her brother’s eyes. A crease appears slowly between his brows. “But this new signature is one of the strongest I’ve felt since Ben. And I fear that this darkness...it will have felt the awakening, as well. At the very least, we must ascertain their safety. They may need protecting.”  
  
Leia nods in agreement.  
  
Luke coughs, his signature tell for awkward proceedings. “Might I suggest a family trip?”  
  
Leia sighs, having seen this coming. “Even if I weren’t up to my neck in Union negotiations...I can’t up and leave for an unidentifiable amount of time. And Ben...to pull him out of classes…” She raises a hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. “Han’s been looking for an excuse to yank him along on one of his crazy adventures for _years-_ ”

“And here’s his chance,” Luke laughs. “Where’s that bastard off to now?”  
  
Leia suppresses a galactic-sized eye-roll. “Some super secret escapade with Calrissian in the Outer Rim. Even Chewie didn’t know the specs. Should be on his way back tonight, if he actually follows through on his promise.”

Her brother’s eyes are _glittering._  “Comm him, Leia.”  
  
“Oh, switch off.”  
  
She cuts off her brother’s warm laughter, sits for a moment in resigned silence, sighs, and enters Han’s commcode.  

 

* * *

 

It’s when she arrives home to a feverish flurry of Teenage Boy that Leia knows she’s made the right decision.  
  
“Mom?” Ben calls from his room.  
  
They’d know each other’s force signatures anywhere in the galaxy--it makes Leia laugh to hear him ask. He must be distracted. “It’s me,” she calls back, shedding her formal robes and making her way slowly towards her son’s room in the far hall. “You talk to your father already?” She asks.  
  
“Yeah," Ben says. "He said he’ll be back tonight and that we can leave first thing in the morning.”  
  
Leia huffs to herself, "sounds about right.”   
  
Her son is in the middle of stuffing a pack when she finally shuffles into his doorway. She doesn’t have to ask before he’s answering the question burning the tip of her tongue.

“I felt it, mom.” Ben pauses to glance at her. Leia watches as his eyes stray aimlessly around his room. He looks...a little untethered, almost. Dazed. It’s so unusual to see him like this. To see him excited. “It was so bright,” he says, eyes finally landing on the palms of his hands--that are trembling slightly.  
  
She instinctively comes closer to take them in hers. They’re already so much larger than Leia’s. “You sure you’re alright, Ben?” She even has to look up a little to meet his eyes, he’s already so _tall_. “Luke and I never meant to overwhelm you with this.”  
  
He’s still looking down at his palms. His voice is light years away when he replies, “I don’t-” he swallows, “-know. I feel...weird, but not bad.”  
  
She catalogues the moles that streak across his face and neck like constellations, so familiar she could map them out like a star chart.

To see him like this is like watching a flower bloom—unwinding under an unseen light. Strange, but lovely to be witness to. She smiles. He finally meets her eyes.  
  
“You think you’ll be able to trace the signature, Ben?”  
  
He hums a soft assent. “There’s something- a...tugging. I’ll feel them, the closer we get.”  
  
Leia nods to herself. “Luke said the burst was too raw for an adult, so you’ll probably be looking for a child.”

“A child?”  
  
Leia half-shrugs. “That’s what Luke said.”  
  
Her son looks away, adorably contemplative. Leia could pinch his cheeks.  
  
“Ben, if it is a kid, you’ll have to be very gentle.” His eyebrows pinch together. Leia laughs and reaches a hand up to his cheek. “You’re better at it than you think.” His eyes have lost some of their glaze when they meet hers this time. “We don’t know if the child will want anything to do with us, remember. It’s very likely they won’t want to leave their family, their home.”  
  
Ben’s mouth pulls down as if he hadn’t yet thought of that. Again, it’s something so foreign to see in her son—Leia hasn’t seen Ben this eager to seek out a stranger’s company in- maybe ever. “But we could establish a...communication, at least,” her son says, quietly. It’s unbearably sweet. Soft Ben is one of Leia’s greatest weaknesses--she's tempted to pepper him in kisses.  
  
She nods, smiling wide. “Of course." She caves and kisses his cheek. "That’s the _least_ we can do,” she assures him.

 

* * *

 

 

Han Solo is closing in on 50 and in a bit of a huff the next morning. Ben is already shuffling around in the Falcon--finding a nook for his pack, Han thinks. He can hear Ben and Chewie tossing navigational coordinates back and forth from where he stands outside on the landing pad.

Amidst the sudden flurry and last-minute arrangements for this little force-kid search party, he hasn’t had a moment to let it sink in that he’s finally finagled his son back on the Falcon. It feels good.  
  
As for the rest of this “awakening” mumbo jumbo, Han can feel his skin itching. Seems like a bit of a needle-haystack situation, if you ask him. But Ben was so eager to make the trip...well, Han would put up with a hundred search parties, when his son was looking at him like that.  
  
Still. The specs are vague at best.  
  
“Oh, a _child_ , sure. That narrows it down,” he grumbles.  
  
“ _Han_.” His wife levels him that Signature Look. “Ben will find them.” She leans up to kiss his cheek, and Han misses the warmth even as he feels it.  
  
So he wraps her in his arms and looks down at the only woman in the galaxy crazy enough to put up with him and his griping. “‘Think so?”  
  
She smiles that damning smile up at him. “Ben’s like his father. The odds could be stacked against him, high as the moons, and he’d still beat them.”

 

* * *

 

Ben is 16 and doesn’t know what the kriff to think.  
  
It’s all happened so fast. One minute he’s studying for his holoexams, trying to forget about the horrible day he’d had at school, and the next it’s like- he’s been struck by lightning from the inside-out.  
  
It was so many sensations at once; a cool shock down his spine, then a searing warmth that spread from the pit of his stomach, down to his toes, back up through his chest and into his hairline, all in the wake of a full-body tidal wave of goosebumps. It was blinding--white, all around him—that faded real slow, blotchy and singed around the edges, like his vision was burned with sun spots.  
  
And then the sun spots turned into a pair of wide hazel eyes. Ben had blinked, and felt an impression of...a figure. A small one. Hot and overbright, like a newborn star.  
  
And even once it had all finally started to settle again—the sensation so vivid Ben was actually breathing heavier from the force of it—what was left in its wake was an odd sensation, somewhere in the center of his chest. It didn’t hurt, but there was a lingering sort of...strain. Like a physical tug. All Ben could think to compare it to was a hook--a painless one, just- immovable like a hook--that was fixed there, in his chest, and a line being very, very lightly pulled. Again, painless, but- secure. It wasn’t fading.  
  
Hours could’ve passed by the time he heard his comlink beep.  
  
“Hey, kid, got a minute?”  
  
Ben was a little surprised he’d had the presence of mind to accept the comm. He’s sure he would’ve been closer to hysterics over the new...sensation...if he hadn't already started to theorize what it could mean.  
  
“Have you talked to mom?” Ben asked without preamble, still a little breathless. He had to know if his theory was right.  
  
He could see his dad’s eyebrows pull together. “Yeah--she just left the office. On her way back to make sure you’re okay after the whole…” his father made an awkward, vague gesture in the air, “- _disturbance_.”  
  
“I felt it,” Ben said, his voice steadier than he felt.  
  
His father assessed him through the holo. “You alright?”  
  
Ben wasn’t looking at his dad, focused again on the strange sensation at the center of his chest, but he answered, “yeah, I just feel...my chest kind of-” It was impossible to describe, so Ben left the rest unfinished. “I’m fine. I think it was something in the force. A person.”  
  
His dad nodded, face still concerned, but also--like most things force-related--uncomfortable. “That’s what your mother and Luke think. An ‘awakening,’ they said.”  
  
Ben let out a relieved breath. It felt good to hear that he’d been right—that it hadn’t just been him, for once. He hated talking about the force, usually, too, if he was honest. It was always something...dark. Usually had to do with his dreams, or right after his dad's left on another trip without him, or the whisper he sometimes hears after a particularly hard day at school. It was almost always something that made his parents and his uncle look at him like something was really _wrong_ with him. That it was something none of them had ever heard of or experienced--some corruption inside of Ben, and Ben alone.  
  
But this...it's something bigger than himself.  _O_ _utside_ of himself. Something bright and weightless, for once.  
  
“Listen, kid, Luke and your mother think it’d be best if you and I go and find this...person. Make sure they’re okay, you know? Neither of them have the time or the fuel for the search,” his father paused for obvious effect as he gave Ben what his mom had coined the ‘Solo Smirk’. “ _B_ _ut I do_.”  
  
The tug in Ben’s chest gave a sharp heave--a hard, but again strangely painless, tug--and with it, a sudden rush. Excitement. Ben felt excited. “We could go find them? Mom would let me- you’d let me come with-?”  
  
Ben could feel himself smiling, a little. _Excited_. Ben could barely understand it himself, usually so anxious when it came to strangers and meeting new people. But somehow that feeling was nowhere to be found. Somehow...he just knew it wasn't necessary. _Not with this person._  

It was such an unfamiliar confidence that Ben couldn’t even name it until days later, sitting in the cockpit of the Falcon that had been parked on the sandy dunes overlooking Niima Outpost:  
  
Fate.  
  
The tugging in his chest--the ‘Force Hook’, he’d unconsciously named it--has been pulled so tight (almost to an _actual_  painful degree), that when it’d cut off abruptly during their landing, Ben had felt the absence...unsettling. Much worse than the near-painful tugs he’d felt before.

But then, finally, on the third morning—while his dad is off tooling around in the market, Ben and Chewie scanning the desert from the cockpit—the hook _yanks_.

 

* * *

 

 

Rey is 6. One more than 5. She scavenges all by herself. She knows a lot about ships and parts. One time she found a fully-intact ionization reactor of an old TIE V38. This other time, she fixed up a holo she found in her AT-AT all by herself. She even used it to teach herself how to read and how to write in standard, because Rey was pretty sure 6-year-olds should know how to read and write in standard.

Rey is sore and hot and thirsty but doesn’t talk about it because none of the other scavengers do. Besides. Rey’s _always_ sore and hot and thirsty.

She hasn’t been to the outpost in a few days. She'd found the motherload in a sunken speeder, but had gotten into a pretty nasty scrap with a nosy uthuthma  ten times her size. She would’ve lost her spoils to it, too, if it hadn’t been for this weird rush of adrenaline. Or something like it. It was hard to describe. She’d been close to collapsing when the powerful feeling had sort of taken over from the inside-out, and when she’d shouted for the uthuthma to leave, he _had_. Immediately. Without another word.

Thinking back on it, Rey smiles. She is much stronger than she looks.

And even though the feeling had knocked her out—she’d crawled under the tarp and slept longer than she’d ever slept before—and even though she still feels...shaky, and extra tired, Rey is sure it had all been worth it as she drags the small sheet of metal behind her, topped with her findings.  
  
It feels like her stomach is eating itself. Today is one of those rare days where she’s so hungry and tired that she wants to cry, but knows she hasn’t had enough water to cry anyway, so she’s just really mad, instead. It’s better to be mad, anyway. She’ll never cry in front of anyone, but _especially_ Unkar. Not ever again. So she gets mad.

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
“One quarter portion, _girl_.”

“ _That’s not fair!_ That paint is new, it’s worth _three times_ the portions!”

Han’s eyes dart up from the vintage blaster he’s been eyeing in one of the outpost tents, following the squeaky outburst until landing on a speck of a girl.  
  
She’s definitely human, and definitely a child--kid’s shorter than a _Jawa._  She’d only come up to just above Han’s knee, and that‘d only be thanks to the top bun on her chestnut head. She’s got three of ‘em, he notes, watching the exchange with renewed interest.

The girl takes the insignificant portion—so small it couldn’t satiate a _bulabird_ , let alone a human kid—and stalks back into the meager marketplace with her emptied, sheet-metal sled trailing in the sand behind her. The closer she gets, the better Han can see her little scrunched up face; a pretty fearsome scowl for someone so tiny.  
  
Kid has more fury in her than a desert storm, Han thinks.  
  
She heaves herself into a chair that’s too high off of the ground for her, though she climbs into it like she’s done it a thousand times. She sets to scrubbing a scrap part big as her head in the big metal dish that’s sitting atop the table. Her face is red and sun-tanned--dirty from labor--her cheeks puffed out.  
  
He watches her, for a minute, wondering where the hell her family is and why the hell she’s scrubbing parts and bartering for food portions all alone in this particularly un-kid-friendly desert outpost. It stirs up an unpleasant feeling in Han’s gut. _Child labor,_ he thinks suddenly.It’s not uncommon in shit-pit  planets like Jakku.  
  
She seems to pick up a conversation with the ancient lady that sits across the table from her. The lady seems to be soothing her. Han wonders if they’re related, or just fellow scavengers.

“ _What?”_  
  
Han hadn’t realized he’d been staring so obviously. Her accent is a bit of a shock. _Not from around here originally, then,_ he thinks, clearing his throat. “Sorry, kid,” he says. “Just heard the commotion, ’s all.”  
  
Her scowl is tempered by the grease stains on her cheek, neck, and the backs of her tiny hands, but she doesn’t look any less menacing for it. Han is tempted to smile.

She’s only just returned to her scrubbing when Ben comes crashing into the Marketplace, an awkward hurricane of limbs. He stumbles through the back of the tent Han is standing in.

Han looks up at his son with a quirked brow and a subtle tilt of his chin in the direction of the little girl.  
  
His son sort of trips over himself, chest still heaving from his sprint over, as he lifts the cloth sheet separating the tents. By the look on Ben’s face, Han’s pretty certain they’ve found their mark.

Kid’s staring at the girl like she’s the only solid thing in a sand-scape full of mirage.    
  
But the girl doesn’t notice. She just collects her things, wipes the stray baby hairs off her sweaty little forehead, and hops off the tent stool, buns bobbing, as she marches over to an ancient model of a land speeder that she _definitely_ shouldn’t be old enough—or even _large_ enough—to be in control of, and-

—takes off, just like that.

 

* * *

 

Ben feels like he’s been cheated. The hook had _yanked_. _So_ painfully. Until his eyes landed on the sun-speck of a girl. And then it was gone. The tugging, the weight, the painless,  _aching_ sensation he’d been so caught up in these last few days—gone _. She'd been sitting_   _right. There._

He’d been so distracted by its abrupt absence that the girl had vanished, too.  
  
“Gotta be her, right?” Ben hears his dad say. When Ben looks up at him, his father’s eyes are still on the horizon, where the girl had vanished on the speeder that was _way_ too big for her. “The light force you and your mom sensed?”  
  
Ben nods, feeling shaken. “Definitely her,” he says.  
  
He can feel his father’s eyes on him, his voice heavy and confused, “You don’t sound too thrilled, kid.”  
  
Ben isn't sure how to hold himself together when the Force Hook has all but disappeared again. “It’s just- I didn’t- she was _right there_...and this- the feeling, in my chest-”  
  
“The one you used to get us here,” his dad supplies.  
  
“Yes, it keeps- shorting out, or something.” Ben’s shaking his head until suddenly something horrible occurs to him. He whips around to meet his father’s eyes, feeling feverish with dread. “Dad, you got a longer look at her—did she look sick? Or injured?”  
  
His father shakes his head, brows drawn together. “She looked...tired. Burnt. Hungry, for sure. It’s a rough place to live, though. Jakku’s gotta be especially merciless on a kid as little as she is.”  
  
Ben feels another tide of panic. “We have to follow her,” he says, already running back toward the Falcon. He can hear his dad follow suit. They’re heading up the ramp when Ben cuts off his dad’s question before he can ask. “I think she’s sick. I think- I think the awakening has drained her. And if she hasn’t eaten enough or slept enough….” His hands are trembling. He watches his dad and Chewie take the controls with a stuttering intake of breath. His voice is shaky, too. “I don’t know, dad. I just know this feeling in my chest isn’t supposed to... _pulse_ like this. It’s supposed to be stronger. More like a steady hum than a broken rhythm.”  
  
“Don’t worry, kid,” Ben lets his eyes meet his dad’s—there’s a familiar, steely confidence there that Ben latches desperately to. “We got a fully-stocked medkit and a crate of portions in the back. We’ll find her.”  
  
Ben nods, swallowing, and turns his focus inward, concentrating harder than he’s ever had to on the Force inside of him. It takes a few moments before he feels something. It’s the weakest tug yet, and Ben’s voice cracks with renewed worry when he blurts, “ _south._ Follow the ridgeline.”

 

* * *

 

 

It takes a while to reach it, but they spot the abandoned AT-AT easily from above.  
  
His dad and Chewie land slowly, careful not to kick up too much sand, but Ben drops himself out of the open airlock before the Falcon’s even touched down.  
  
There’s another pulse. A weak tug. He follows it, and her little footprints, barreling through a porthole in the side of the fallen walker. Ben has to listen especially hard over the sound of his own rattling breath and erratic heartbeat.  
  
It doesn’t take long--there aren’t a lot of places for her to be, the space is so cramped. With one hand trailing on the low ceiling, he winds his way toward the back, having to duck and hunch uncomfortably. He crawls over what looks like a small, makeshift workbench and into a narrow space, where the tiny girl is collapsed in the center of a folded tarp.  
  
Ben feels his face crumble a little, seeing her like this. His first instinct is to scoop her up and keep her close, but first, he realizes, he should check if there’s anyone else in the AT-AT. _Where the_ _kriff_ _is her family?_  
  
“Ben? She in there?” He hears his dad call from the porthole.  
  
“She’s here,” Ben twists his midsection to holler back. “Is there anyone else?”  
  
When his father’s swept the cramped space and calls a firm, “Just us, kid,” Ben determinedly twists back around to move toward her.  
  
He has to kneel to reach her in the confined space. He reaches out and shakes her little arm gently, hoping to wake her without scaring her. Another spike of panic lances through him when she doesn’t stir at all.

 _Jakku’s gotta be especially merciless on a kid as little as she is._ _  
_ _  
_ Ben pulls her carefully into his arms, attentive of her head as he ducks and maneuvers his way out of the AT-AT and back onto the Falcon. His dad already has the medkit sitting open on the top of the hologram board, Chewie making his way around the ship to open the cooling vents, when Ben gently deposits the girl on the bunk behind the lounge seat.  
  
Ben grabs the canteen of water his father passes him without really seeing it. The girl’s compact chest is rising and falling too slowly. Her face has an irregular flush to it. Chewie mewls at him to “elevate her head and legs,” and Ben doesn’t hesitate. His dad hands him a cool, damp rag that he lays on her head.  
  
It should be working...but something still feels _off_. This isn’t normal heat exhaustion. It’s something more extreme. Ben doesn’t know how he knows, he just- _knows_.  
  
He’s never felt younger than he does when he turns to his dad and chokes out, “it’s not working. Dad, this is- it’s something else, I- I don’t know what-” and he feels a stinging in his eyes. He looks at the girl again. He can’t feel the tug. He _hates_ that he _can’t feel the tug_. He just found her! He _almost had_ her!  
  
He feels his dad’s hand on his shoulder. There’s a silence that swells painfully, when suddenly his dad snaps his fingers. It cracks through the silence so hard that Ben startles. His dad leaps up and disappears around the corner, back in moments with his commlink. His dad is looking at him with lifted brows when he asks, “‘Something else’, you said, right?” Ben nods, confused but intent. “It could be a force thing, Ben.” His father’s voice is low as his eyes flicker to the girl. “Your mother’s told me before about Luke using healing magic on his students-”  
  
He doesn’t have to finish. Han's already dialed, Ben’s eyes wide as saucers when the comm miraculously has enough of a signal to reach his uncle. Ben’s never been happier to see him.    
  
“Hey, Luke, it’s your BFF, Han--listen, we got the little force supernova here in the Falcon, and she’s real sick. Think you could give Ben a few tips on how to do that healing thing you can do?”  
  
Luke doesn’t waste any time, and Ben wipes at his eyes before taking the holo from his dad with intense determination.  
  
His uncle’s voice crackles through the holo, quick and clinical. “How weak is her signature?”  
  
Ben pulls every cell of focus inward, closing his eyes and breathing deeply. “I can still...feel it...but it’s pulsing. Slower than before.”  
  
“Ben, I’m going to need you to listen very carefully, and you’re going to have to work as fast as you physically can, even if it tires you.”  
  
Ben feels another spike of panic, but quells it--for her sake. “Okay.”  
  
“Close your eyes.” His uncle instructs. “Breathe deeply. Center the force in the palms of your hands...can you do that?”  
  
Ben hasn’t opened himself up to the force like this in years. He'd chosen to turn away from it entirely when the nightmares started to get worse. But he knows he's strong with it. Tracing the girl’s signature had been second nature. Like finding his parents or Luke or Chewie in the force. But opening himself up to it like this...it’s like turning the faucet all the way on, as opposed to the very, very light trickle it's been set to for so long. It’s more difficult that he’d imagined. There’s a dark pressure at the base of his skull that he can feel seeping as the channel between himself and the Force widens. The same pressure he feels when he’s had a nightmare...or heard the whispers….  
  
But there’s something new--something warm, where his link with the force used to feel much, much colder.  
  
It swells and grows at a much quicker rate than the dark pressure, nearly banishing it altogether.   
  
And suddenly-

 _“Ben,”_  a tinkling, young voice. A glowing orange light that sears the edges of everything around it like-  
  
Like sun spots.  
  
It's her.   
  
He can’t- _see_ her, though--he can only hear...  
  
“Have you found her?” His uncle’s voice is a balm inside his head, deliberately deep and reassuring. Calm. Ben measures his breath and sharpens his focus to the tingling in his palms.  
  
“Yes. But I can’t...see her yet.”  
  
“But you can hear her?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Good, Ben, _good._ Focus the energy in your hands...reach for the girl in front of you. Her physical self.”  
  
Eyes still closed, Ben reaches a palm to the side of the girl’s small head--so small that his hand spans the length of it. Her round, soft cheek is hot in his palm. Her orange signature bursts around him, engulfing Ben in its heat.

 _“Ben?”_   This time, when she calls, it’s a question.  
  
_Rey…._  
  
Her name is Rey.  
  
He realizes her signature is still...flickering. It’s less obvious when they touch, but still--it isn't the strong, steady hum he knows it should be. _“Rey? I’m here!”_  
  
_“Ben...I’m really...tired.”_  
  
Ben’s focus quivers at the broken sound. His control slips, panic and fear and worry  _pounding_ at the sound of her voice--a voice that belongs everywhere; past, present, future. She’s an irreplaceable part of all three. She can’t break. She _can’t fade-_

Ben feels so scared. He doesn’t know how to reply, how to slow everything down--everything’s happening too _fast_ , and they haven’t even had the chance to _meet._  
  
“ _Breathe_ ,” his uncle’s cool voice slices through his rising panic. “She’s still with us, Ben. We both know how strong she is. You have to be strong, too." Ben works to school himself. "She needs to feed off of your strength for this to work.”  
  
Ben’s breath is shakier than before, but he focuses his fear and worry into a sharper determination. “How do I do that?”

“The tingle in your palm...is the force still focused there? Do you have it centered?”  
  
Ben has to center it again...it takes him a few moments, but he manages it again. Rey is still hot under his palm. A good sign. He draws himself straighter, forces more of his power where that contact is glowing. “...Yes.”  
  
“Now, weave your strength with hers. Find her light, surround it with your own. _Find her_.”  
  
It’s a lot easier said than done, but Ben thinks he understands. He’s never had to find his own light, and it feels pathetically small, once he does. But as he searches for Rey, he can feel it...expanding. Growing brighter with every determined step he takes within the Force.  
  
That’s when he finally sees her.  
  
The force is a strange sort of...plane. It’s the only way Ben can describe it. In the past, the place Ben had entered--the plane he’d found when opening himself up to the force--had always been dark and cramped. Loud--like static. Difficult to breathe in. Draining.  
  
This plane is...the opposite, in every way.  
  
Everything is bright. Not- blinding, though, just...colorful, where Ben had only ever experienced monotones, before. 

Little Rey is lying on the metaphysical floor of this plane. A bright orange sun spot. Ben absently wonders what his own color is.  
  
He approaches her.  
  
Decides to lie down, too.  
  
She takes his hand. Like she’s done it a hundred- a thousand times before.  
  
_Fate_ , he thinks again. He is completely unafraid of it here, with her.   
  
They’re just sort of- suspended in the cosmos. It’s a very strange sensation. Impossible to describe. The warmth of her hand feels real.

He lets his light reach out for hers. Again, to physically describe it is impossible, but the best he can do is imagine their light signatures- hugging, really.  
  
“Good, Ben!” He smiles at the elated sound of his uncle’s voice. “Keep doing what you’re doing,” Luke says. “Hold it.”  
_  
__“Who’s that?”_ Rey rolls her head to the side to look over at him, so he does the same.

For some reason, it makes perfect sense that Rey should hear Luke’s voice, too.  
_  
_ _“My uncle. He’s helping me heal you.”_  
  
Rey dimples when she smiles.  
  
Ben smiles, too. _“Is it working?”_ He asks.  
  
He watches her little brows pinch. _“I think so.”_  
  
Ben’s brows pinch, too. _“Do you feel...stronger? Less tired?”_ The fear is still there...somewhere. Lingering like a raincloud somewhere in the distance of this otherwise peaceful plane. It’s like nothing Ben’s ever felt. His mind feels weightless. Totally weightless. And quiet. So much quieter than usual.  
  
Rey pokes him in the side.  
  
It feels real enough that Ben jerks away a little. _“Ow?”_

Rey giggles. _“It's so much better here!”_ She laughs and laughs. _“Here I can poke you."_ It doesn’t make much sense, but Ben doesn’t ask any questions. She’s 6, after all. She jabs at him again and he wiggles away playfully.  
  
On the outside of himself, he can feel it working. The Force Healing. He can feel her light expanding, her strength growing.    
  
To test it--to make sure it’s working inside and out--Ben stands. _“No more poking.”_ He warns, smiling down at her.  
  
She takes the bait easily. She hiccups another toddler-like giggle and launches herself from the floor to chase him.  
  
“There she is, Ben, there she is!” He hears his uncle shout, as triumphant and relieved as Ben feels. The light around and between he and Rey expands further, finally settling into a steady, soothing hum. It’s such a strange sensation. So _strong_. Even as they give chase in the Force--it wraps around them completely.  
  
“Healing is no easy feat, Ben.” He's never heard his uncle sound so proud, and it's a euphoric feeling. “You did a fantastic job. Time to rest….”  
  
Ben feels Rey knock into him in the force-plane where they're still bound together. _“Got you!”_ She shouts, arms wrapped around his leg like it’s her trophy.  
  
Ben feels himself slip easily to the floor, worn out in an extremely satisfying way as Rey blinks at him from above. It’s an amusing mirror of their previous positions.  
  
_“Ben?”_ Rey asks, her voice quieter, edged with confusion.  
  
He reaches out a hand to take hers. _“I healed you, Rey. It worked."_    
  
There’s a very slight rumble around them as her clear, hazel eyes shine with worry. _"But why are you fading?"_  
  
_Kriff_ , Ben thinks, and pulls her down, so she’s on her knees beside him. _“It’s okay,”_ he hurries to soothe. His eyes and limbs feel heavier than ever, but he fights it long enough to convince her that he’s better than okay, and that he isn't leaving. He realizes how important it is, somehow, that she knows he  _isn't leaving her behind_. _“You'll see me soon. I just need some rest.”_  
  
She sniffs and nods. _“Thanks, Ben.”_  
  
He closes his eyes, and the last words that hang between them are, _“anytime, Rey.”_

 


	2. Chapter 2

“Whoa, hey, _hey-_ kid?” Han catches his son’s tipping torso before it can hit the floor. “ _Ben?_ ”  
  
“It’s okay, Han, he just needs to rest. Force healing is a very...draining process, even for a master,” Luke assures from the holo. “Ben is fine. Better than fine…” Luke pauses, a tone of awe in his voice when he speaks again. “I...haven't felt his light this strongly in the force since he was a child.”  
  
After a few moments of careful inspection, Han can’t see anything wrong with his son. He grumbles in the general direction of the commlink--something he hopes sounds like “thanks, talk to you later,” but probably comes out more like, “crazy old bastard”--and shuts it off.  
  
Just in time, too, because when he looks up, there’s a very awake, wary little girl watching him and Chewie from the corner of the bunk. Han hears Chewie make himself scarce--probably for the best. An 8 foot tall mountain of fur can’t be the most comforting presence when you’re tiny, disoriented, and surrounded by strangers.  
  
She looks close to launching herself from the bunk--at Han or out the airlock, he isn’t yet sure--when her eyes land on Ben, and the fight tensing her small body is sapped away. “Is he okay?” She asks. She’s eyeing Han with clear distrust, her voice cracked and dry.  
  
“Yeah, kid, he’s fine.” Ben’s gangly self is still collapsed into his side; a little flushed but otherwise sleeping peacefully. Han maneuvers him gently to the ground before relaxing on the floor against the backside of the lounge seat. “How are _you_ feelin’, huh?” He picks up the canteen of water lying where Ben had left it, and offers it to her.  
  
The girl looks shocked by the question. As if she-  
  
Han’s heart hurts a little.  
  
_As if she’s never been asked it before._  
  
She looks less tense and more alert when she takes the canteen in both hands. She _looks_ better, he thinks, watching her drink. Even the dry, flaking blisters that’d spanned the bridge of her nose and across her freckled cheeks look like they were never there. _Right,_ Han thinks, _magic force stuff_ .  
  
He can’t help but smile down at his son, though. He’s proud. Ben had saved the girl’s life.  
  
Her voice is stronger--clearly gaining confidence that Han isn’t there to harm her--when she blurts, “Are you here to take me home?”  
  
Kriff.   
  
Now _there’s_ a loaded question.  
  
“Uh...depends, kid.” Han scratches the back of his neck. “Where’s home?”

“Rey. I’m _Rey_ . I’m not a ‘kid’, I’m- a scavenger.” She insists, as if the title lends her years he can’t see. He thinks it might. Her face is scrunched into that same, fierce scowl Han’d seen back in the marketplace. He apologizes with a smile, and her scowl recedes into a pout. “And I don’t remember,” she confesses, quieter. “I thought…he might know….”  
  
She’s looking down at Ben, and Han feels his head start to hurt.  
  
“Kid-” she glares. He starts over. “- _Rey,_ where are your parents? Your family?”    
  
Turns out Rey is as easy to read as Ben is--everything’s there; on her face, in her eyes. Even her body sort of- _sags_ at the question. “They left four hundred and seventy-two days ago. I’ve been waiting for them to come back.”

It’s...Han’s seen a lot of shit in his nearly 40 years, but this is pretty damn heartbreaking. He thinks Rey can’t be older than 5. No more than 3 feet tall. Too thin--too much muscle--for a kid her age. So young. So small.

And she’s alone.

He doesn’t want her to see pity in his eyes--knows it’s the last thing she wants or needs. Instead, he follows her lead. “Why should _he_ know?” He asks, nodding down at Ben.

Rey fidgets with the frayed edge of her shirt and stares harder down at Han’s son. She doesn’t seem to know how to answer.  
  
_Oi. Force magic._  
  
“Well,” Han rises to his feet, “you hungry, Rey? Chewie and I are pretty famished if you’re up for a meal.”  
  
Rey lowers herself from the bunk and turns to look up at him. She looks like she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. Han’s heart gives another painful tug. _Right_ , he thinks. Kid's probably never been offered anything freely in her life. Not on Jakku--not without a price.   
  
“You won’t-” she starts, pauses, swallows nervously, “Is that okay?”  
  
It’s pure instinct that has Han lower himself to one knee in front of her. “Kid, you can have as many portions as you want. Just do one thing for me.”  
  
Her hazel eyes sharpen to steel.  
  
“Don’t insult the wookie. He’s...sensitive.”  
  
Her hazel eyes melt.  
  
“And,” he reaches out for her hand, and she seems happy to lend it. “You have to call me Han. All my friends do.”  
  
Her dimples might be the cutest thing Han’s seen in all the galaxies.

 

* * *

 

Several hours later, the unlikely trio has eaten their weight in portions, half-assed a crash course in Dejarik that makes Rey laugh, and soldered some electrical wiring Han and Chewie had meant to get to _months_ ago, with Rey’s help. Chewie has managed to tuck Ben carefully into his designated cot behind the galley, as Rey slips herself into the cockpit behind Han and climbs into the co-pilot’s chair like she owns it.  
  
“You know a lot about ships, then, do ya?”  
  
“I know about ship _parts_ ,” Rey counters proudly, chest out. “I know what they’re worth and where they go and how to fix them and I even know where not to scrub them.”  
  
Han whistles, impressed and happy to stroke her youthful ego.   
  
“Yeah,” Rey nods, dimpling again. “I know my stuff.”  
  
“You sure do. I tell ya- Chewie and I could use that sort of expertise.”  
  
Rey’s head snaps away from the powered-down controls she’s been pressing and playing with.  
  
Han clears his throat, a little gruff. “It’d be nice to have an extra hand around here. Besides,” he turns to offer her a smirk, “Chewie kinda likes you.”  
  
Her eyes are so wide and sparkly, there’s an entire nebula in ‘em. _“You’d let me come with?!”_ She’s standing on the co-pilot’s seat where her feet had previously been dangling off the edge, looking damn near close to exploding. Han watches as something flits across her face, dampening the eager light in her eyes. “But I can’t-” her shoulders sag. “I can’t leave. What if my parents….”  
  
Han doesn’t want to be the one to have this conversation with her. Not at all.  
  
He sighs.  
  
“I won’t tell you what to do, Rey,” he offers gently. “But I’ll say this; you might be here a while.”

Rey slowly sinks into the chair, all previous signs of excitement vanished.  
  
“All I’m sayin’, kid, is that you’re welcome to join us. Chewie, Ben and I, we-” he could feel her gaze on him at the sound of Ben’s name. “-We wouldn’t mind sharing the space.”  
  
He can see her eyes shining in the low light of the setting Jakku sun when they’re interrupted by a fumbling from the galley--there’s a _thud_ , and then a muffled, frustrated bleating from Chewie.

Rey’s already out of her chair when Han rounds the corner behind her, leading to the bunks.  
  
Ben’s leaning--heavily--against the middle door panel. Chewie’s hovering like the nervous uncle he is, barking at Ben to lay back down.  
  
But Ben just tiredly swats him away, sucks in another breath and looks up.  
  
Right at Rey.

...  
  
There’s a heavy silence, and Han suddenly realizes that he and Chewie should probably scatter. That this is a moment Ben probably wants to himself. So Han shoos the wookie, and hides behind the opposite corner, behind the bulkhead door, so he can spy like the terrible father he is.  
  
Rey stands silent and nervous, watching Ben like he might actually be a bantha in disguise.

When he sees Ben suddenly unclench and move closer to her, Han can tell without a doubt that his son has also sensed the kid’s anxiety.

“You’re nervous,” Ben just sort of- _announces_ . Han wants to smack his forehead. _Good opener, son._

Rey’s lower lip starts to wobble and Han wonders if maybe he should step in, when-

“Don’t be,” Ben says, softer. He’s moving so carefully towards her--still clearly physically exhausted from the healing--and Han watches his son swallow nervously himself before bending down in front of the girl, eye to eye. “My name is Ben.” He offers a hand in the small space between them. _Kid has such big hands already. When did he grow into_ those _?_

Han hears the girl’s voice cracking on her own name as she introduces herself, “Rey.” And places her itty-bitty sun-tanned hand in Ben’s, clearly uncertain as to what a handshake is, but trying to be firm.

Han sees a smile flicker over Ben’s face—it’s quick, but it seems to melt the tense atmosphere entirely, and Han watches as Rey smiles back. Just as small, just as quick as Ben’s, but equally disarming in its genuity.

And then, all at once, it’s like a light switch is turned on inside of her. “Oh,  _Ben_ ,” she repeats, like she’d met him someplace before. And then she blurts, “I’ve seen you before.”

It’s a confession that takes both Solo boys completely by surprise.

His son is forced to recover first, and his genius reply is a flat, “What?”

Rey’s hand is still firmly in Ben’s, the two of them still on eye-level, when she steps, boldly—with a renewed sort of fearlessness that is both unsurprising and entirely left-field—into Ben’s space. His son sort of moves his head back and straightens his spine, still on one knee and looking tempted to stand again. “I’ve dreamed about you before,” Rey says matter-of-factly. “One time you were holding my hand like this, and another time you were hugging me and this other time I got hurt and you-“ She rambles on, confessing it all with an unsettling casualness only a child can achieve.

She pauses to scrunch up her face again. Han watches with his breath held as she reaches a tiny hand up to Ben’s shocked face, his son’s mouth having fallen slightly open and his eyebrows drawn together with caution. And yet he doesn’t pull away from Rey or her reaching hand as she sets it on his cheek.

“I've had to wait,” she says, childish petulance in her voice and face, but a burning, ancient loneliness in her eyes.

Han can see the abrupt shining in his boy’s eyes as they lock with hers. Han feels a stinging sensation behind his own as he watches his son stare at the little girl with such naked concern and- guilt?

Ben reaches his own hand up to cover hers. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. Han isn’t sure Ben meant to. Rey inserts herself into Ben’s arms, hooking her little chin over Ben’s shoulder like she’s done it a hundred times before.

Han can hear her whisper back, “Sorry you had to wait, too.”

Han may know squat about the Force, but even he knows that this is something...spiritual. Cosmic.

Rey pulls out of the hug and Han can see his son looks...dazed, but also like he’s been warmed from the inside-out. Like the same light that switched on in Rey when she recognized Ben have suddenly switched on in the boy, too.

Han sees it as his opening. “ _So_ ,” he announces, pulling up his belt as he strolls casually back into the galley like he hadn’t been hiding just behind the corner for the length of their introduction. “Looks like you two have finally met.”  

Ben’s eyes finally find his, and where Han was expecting tension, he finds only a weary haze—like his son is seeing him, but his mind is still suspended in his and Rey’s meeting. If he’s being honest with himself, so is Han’s.

“Yeah….” Ben shakes his head a little as if to clear it, and greets him with a soft, cracked, “hey, Dad.”

Relieved by the rare softness, Han musses a hand through his kid’s messy black tufts and replies warmly, “Son. You did a pretty killer job with that healing thing.”

Ben ducks away too late for Han to miss the twitch at the corner of his mouth. Now fully smiling, himself, Han redirects his attention to the Little Miss.

He shouldn’t be shocked to find Rey holding Ben’s hand as she starts to tug him back toward the cockpit. It’s where she already seems to stubbornly belong—beside Ben. What _does_ surprise him is that Ben seems totally disinclined to extract himself from _her_ side. Ben doesn’t seem even the least bit uncomfortable at the casual contact, and that’s new. His son is barely tolerant of a paternal pat on the shoulder. 

But instead of commenting, Han just smirks at the pair of them, and orders Rey to pick another portion pack for dinner.

 

* * *

 

They’ve been sitting outside in the sand for nearly an hour, listening to Rey scuffling around in her makeshift shelter. She's humming to herself in a sweet, childlike way as she prepares her things for what Ben thinks is a wholly unnecessary afternoon of scavenging. She wouldn’t have to work for her food at all if she’d just _come with them._  
  
“Kid,” his dad grumbles. “What the kriff are we gonna do.”  
  
Ben’s lips are chapped, and even after another several hours of sleep last night, he can still feel a bone-deep fatigue leftover from the force heal. All he wants to do is leave Jakku.  
  
...Just not until they’ve convinced Rey to leave with them.  
  
Ben blows out a frustrated breath. “I don’t know,” he grouches.  
  
Rey had insisted on sleeping in her AT-AT after dinner the previous evening. She’d even offered to share her own (pitifully tiny) space with them--Chewie included--in a clear, endearing show of independence.  
  
It was...very cute. But irritating. She was stubborn, they’d quickly come to realize.  
  
Ben glares at the rusted edges of the AT-AT’s porthole. All sharp and hard. Cold. She deserves a bed. A cozy, _soft_ bed. And she deserves walls that don't creak and shiver at night. And more space for her to actually move around and play in.  
  
Rey deserves a _home_ , not this half-corroded pile of scrap-metal.  
  
If it were up to him, she’d be snuggled into the spare room in Canthem house by now, surrounded by plush blankets and down pillows and and up to her little neck in stuffed banthas big as she is.  
  
But life is dumb and unfair and Ben growls to himself because it isn’t up to him at all.  
  
His dad is sprawled in the sand to Ben’s left, Chewie sitting on his right. They’re reclined below the airlock, in the Falcon’s cool shadow, trying to figure out how to convince a six year old that she should ditch the sandy prison and fly away with them to Coruscant where she _actually_ belongs.  
  
Ben’s never felt so frustrated in his life.  
  
Still, even sweating through his henley and feeling sand in places it does _not_ belong, Ben has to admit that it’s nice just- being near her. A part of Ben doesn’t care where the kriff they are, as long as Rey is humming and happy and giving off that healthy orange force-glow of hers.

Chewie moans (again) about the mid-morning heat.  
  
Han scoffs. “Then get back in the Falcon, you sweaty bantha’s ass.”  
  
Ben looks over at Chewie with a similarly unsympathetic look. They’re _all_ hot and tired. But Ben doesn’t want to let Rey out of his sight yet, and his dad is better at the coercion thing than Ben is. If anyone’s going to have any insight into getting treasure off a planet, it’s the Infamous Smuggler, Han Solo.

They just need to figure out how the kriff to do it without breaking Rey’s heart.  
  
Unfortunately, Ben’s pretty sure it’s an inevitability. One that _none_ of them are eager for.

 

* * *

 

When Rey’s finally got her supplies together, they still don’t have a plan, but Ben knows he isn’t going to let her go alone. Thankfully, his dad seems to understand without Ben having to say it. It’s a rare thing--this understanding between them--and Ben...appreciates it.   
  
“Chewie, you and I are stayin’ with the Falcon. She could use another few gallons of coolant.” The wookie gives a satisfied warble, eager to remain where there’s air conditioning. “Kid, you take this.” His dad hands Ben his blaster, eyes fixed grimly over Ben’s shoulder where Rey’s loading her metal sheet-sled. “Don’t let anything come within ten feet of her.”  
  
Ben swallows a nervous lump at the heavy feeling of the blaster and nods. Again--where Rey's concerned, they seem to be on the same page.

 

* * *

  
  
  
Surprisingly, Rey doesn’t protest his company. She seems happy to have someone to talk to.  
  
And talk she does. She’s chatty, when you ask the right questions. It makes Ben smile. Her candid nature is an endearing surprise.  
  
Ben is also a little surprised at how _clever_ Rey is. Especially for her age. As they trek through the hot sand, Rey reveals a shocking penchant for languages, a vast expertise in ship models and their common components, an innate understanding of weather patterns, and even a modest knowledge of native Jakku fauna.

It’s a little intimidating.  _No wonder she’s survived this long on her own._  
  
Ben feels lulled by the bubbly, girlish sound of her voice as she weaves from topic to topic. Eventually it lands back on her work.  
  
“-and sometimes Grunga shares her water with me. But only if Unkar won’t give me any.”  
  
The pleasant lull abruptly sours. “...Does he do that a lot? Withhold water from you?”  
  
Rey bobs her buns in offhand affirmation, like it’s normal. Like it’s to be _expected_ . “Yeah. Portions, too, when I haven’t found enough in a day. But that doesn’t happen a lot.” Rey shrugs her little shoulder, unaffected. “I usually find the goodest stuff.”  
  
Ben bristles further. Even the cute grammatical flub isn’t enough to distract Ben from the growing anger in the pit of his stomach. _It’s sickening,_ he thinks darkly, _the way Rey’s treated here._ He doesn’t want her to go back to the outpost. Isn’t sure what he’d do if he had to watch her argue with Plutt over the things she deserves _free access to._  
  
Rey remains oblivious to his clenching fists. She’s got her eyes trained on the sand ahead of them, scanning. Ben had insisted on pulling her metal sheet-sled, so she’s a few steps ahead of him when he hears her mutter a quiet, triumphant, “ _found you_.” They’d been walking for nearly two and half hours when they finally reach the half-buried wreckage of a land speeder.

Rey pulls off the sand-tarp she’d clearly spread over it herself.  
  
She looks up at Ben with expectant eyes. He doesn't have to put on any faces to look impressed, and is rewarded with dimples. “I fought off an uthuthma for this beauty,” she says, grabbing a few things from her sled as Ben whips around in horror.     
  
“An _uthuthma_ ?” Ben chokes. The species was enormous--bigger than Chewie--and infamously unfriendly. Ben feels like he might be sick.  
  
“Yeah, he was tough,” she says, distracted from his reaction by the supplies she’s gathering. “I had bruises where he’d tossed me away,” Ben feels a full-body _flinch_ at the imagery, “but I was tougher. I just had to shout really loud. He left me alone after that.” Again, she says it all like it’s normal. Like fighting off a creature twenty times her muscle mass and surviving is just- _a day in the life._  
  
The mental image of Rey, battered and bruised over something so trivial as a _speeder_ ...something in Ben finally snaps.    
  
“Rey, you have to  come with us. _”_  
  
Rey looks up, confused by the non sequitur.  
  
“You shouldn’t have to- you shouldn’t be out here all alone--collapsing from heat exhaustion, fighting off uthuthmas, arguing with Plutt over-” Ben pauses to steady himself. _You’ll have to be very gentle, Ben,_ he remembers. It had been his mother’s final warning before they'd left. He bends to his knees in front of her, plucking the scrap-tools from her tiny, grease-streaked hands so he can hold them between his. “You don’t have to scavenge in exchange for food, where we’re from. You don’t have to bargain for water or hide from sand storms. If you come with us, you can just...be a kid.”

Rey’s eyes grow wide, her little brows pulled together under Ben’s intense plea. She looks almost- confused.  
  
“You know- playing, going to school, meeting other kids.” He's barely had a childhood, himself, but Ben knows what it should look like, and it's not what Rey's being put through. He knows how desperate he sounds, but there’s no helping it now. It has to be her decision to leave with them. It _has_ to be. “You don't have to be alone, Rey.”  
  
“But what about my family?”  
  
It’s a broken whisper that tears at Ben’s heart. But he’s had his next words locked and loaded all morning. “Rey…” he pulls her close, so he can rest his forehead against hers as he insists, “ _we can be your family_ .”  
  
She sniffles, but Ben feels like he may have had a breakthrough, finally-  
  
“But I have to be here- what if they come back….” she whispers.  
  
Ben feels all the wind leave his sails. He sags a little helplessly, feeling more tired than he had during the force heal.  
  
He lets out a long, exhausted breath before Ben feels Rey step further into his arms, and he can’t do anything but tuck her in close.  
  
They stay like that for only a moment longer before Ben tugs one of her buns, a hollow smile on his face when he teases her into showing him her find.  
  
_This isn’t over,_ he thinks. _I’m not leaving you._

 

* * *

   
  


That evening, Ben’s sat at the Falcon’s holo table with Rey and their re-hydrated dinner, dreading the trip he knows Rey wants to make back to the outpost to trade in her finds, when Han gets a comm from Leia.  
  
“ _So?”_ Her dry, impatient voice floods the lounge. Ben smiles to himself. _“_ Where the kriff are you guys?”  
  
Ben gets up and plucks the comm out of his sputtering father’s hands before another one of their legendary squabble erupts. “It’s my fault, mom. I just wanted to…” he turns to eye Rey, still eating her portions with a happy hum--her little feet moving up and down where they dangle off the edge of her seat. He decides to take the comm into the bunk room so she can’t hear. “-Try the easy way first.”  
  
His mother’s eyes go soft at the sight of him. His eyes probably do something similar. He’s so tired. This is all so much harder than he thought it'd be. He misses his mom. “What’s the ‘easy way’?” She asks.  
  
Ben sighs. “For her to realize on her own that her parents aren’t coming back and that we’re her best chance for a new family.”  
  
Leia huffs, “ _‘Easy_ ,’ sure.” Her brows are pulled together. Ben mirrors the look without meaning to. “And the ‘hard way’?”  
  
“...Giving her our spare commlink, pretending to leave, and hovering in atmo until she comms us to come back for her.” It’s cruel, and Ben isn’t actually sure it will work, but they’re running out of options, and they all know it has to be Rey’s choice to leave.

"And if that doesn't work?" Leia gently prods.  
  
Ben really, _really_ doesn’t want to think about what they’ll do if it doesn't work. He hasn’t let himself believe it won't.  
  
It’s clear from the concern on Leia’s face that she also thinks it’s a pretty cruel way to do it, but all she says is a diplomatic, “good luck, Ben.”  
  
  



	3. Chapter 3

The next morning, Ben is woken by several things: the first being the tiny human sitting on his chest, drawing on his arm with her tiny pink tongue poking out. The second being his father, who is shoving a beeping commlink into Ben's sleepy face. He can even hear Chewie moaning from somewhere in the bowels of the Falcon.  
  
Ben thinks it all should shock him; the chaos, the racket, the naturalness of it all--especially between himself and the 6-year-old using him as a lounge seat slash canvas. None of it is anything like his “usual” awakening: alone in an empty, silent house, blinking away the nightmares that have inevitably wracked his sweat-soaked, heaving chest. _That’s_ what he’s used to.  
  
He thinks all this mayhem should be surprising. But it isn’t. None of it. All he feels...is...normal. Groggy and slow, in place of sweaty and panicked. He feels like he had in that force connection with Rey; weightless and warm.

Still, Ben Solo will never be a morning person, so he takes the commlink with a scowl, grumbling something nonsensical at the menaces who’ve woken him from the best sleep he’s had in years.  
  
Han chuckles as he heads back out of the galley. Ben squints peevishly into the light and pulls up his arm to answer the comm. Rey huffs--as if _he_ is inconveniencing _her_ \--just before his uncle’s blue visage flickers to life between them.  
  
Luke snorts. “Hello, nephew. Have I called in the middle of a sandstorm? Is that why your hair looks like black tentacles and you’re squinting like you have the force of a thousand winds caught in your eyes?”  
  
Ben is unable to come up with anything beyond a few blinks an offended twist of his lips. His uncle and Rey laugh.  
  
Ben gestures with his head for Rey to join him at the head of the bunk, so he can introduce her. “Uncle Luke, this is Rey- _oof!_ ” His raspy introduction is interrupted by Rey throwing herself _bodily_ between the comm and Ben’s face. His nose is squished into the 6-year-old’s back and her elbows are digging into his collarbones like daggers as she snags the commlink from Ben’s hands to greet the Jedi Master herself.  
  
“I’m Rey!” She shouts. Ben can feel the reverb of it through her back and finally twists his upper half to force her off. He effectively reclaims the commlink.  
  
“ _Uncle Luke_ ,” he repeats, irritated, tipping the viewport so the two can see each other, “this is Rey. Rey, this is my uncle, Luke Skywalker.”  
  
His uncle is laughing as he and Rey exchange proper greetings, and then the tiny demon has scuttled back down to the end of the bunk and off the side, likely off to find something more exciting to do than waking up a cranky teenage boy.   
  
Luke is still smiling when Ben finally sits upright in his bunk, fixing his hair a little and sighing. “Sorry about that.”  
  
“Don’t be. I like her already.”

Ben yawns. “Yeah, she gets that a lot here on the Falcon.”

Luke’s tone sobers. “Leia told me you haven’t been able to convince her to leave with you, even though she’s been orphaned there.”  
  
_Orphaned._ The ugly truth. “Yes. We were going to try to...let her come to us after making her think we’ve left, but…” Ben sighs again and runs a hand through his messy hair. “None of us like the idea. Even Chewie thinks it’s too cruel.”  
  
Luke nods. “I think there might be another way.”  
  
Ben rallies. “What is it?”  
  
“ _Y_ _ou_ .”  
  
Ben’s eye twitches. His uncle has always had a keen talent for being as vague and as cryptic as humanly possible.  
  
Luke sighs, a worried ‘v’ between his brows. “ I don’t need to tell you how vulnerable Rey is--you may have been the first to reach her, Ben, but there will be others, if she stays. _You_ are the only bait she’ll take.”

It’s a swift fist to the gut—Ben feels like he might hurl from the force of it. _There will be others._ Ben can vividly imagine the same twisted presence and fiendish whispers that have haunted his dreams for years...shifting their focus.  
  
_Not her,_ he thinks fervently. _They can never have Rey._  
  
“Ben, be honest with her,” Luke says. Ben meets his eyes through the comm. “Tell her that you need her, too.”  


* * *

 

  
Han isn’t used to children. Ben had been an anomaly--a quiet kid. Always focused. Easy to keep close and get a grip on.  
  
Rey is a kriffing _force of nature_ .  
  
“C’mon, kid, get outta there and let me fix it myself.”  
  
She’s fiddling with the half-assed soldering job Han had barely managed this morning, somehow having finagled herself up the six feet of circuitry pipes when he wasn’t looking. She’s on her tummy, hands shoved into an access panel with her legs astride the top tube like it’s a damn bantha ride at the Galactic City fair.  
  
Chewie warbles from over his shoulder. Han scowls back at him. “My pride isn’t _wounded_ -”  
  
Ben, fresh out of the sonic shower, rounds the corner into the lounge and takes in the situation with a face that has Exasperated Organa written all over it. He comes up next to Han and lifts his arms in a silent demand.  
  
Rey releases the wires (that she’d reconnected with her bare _kriffing_ hands) and reaches for Ben without question. Han watches his son scoop his hands under her arms, gently pulling her tiny form down from the circuitry piping. Instead of putting her down, though, Ben just situates her in his arms and squints at his father like _Han’s_ the child.  
  
He grimaces, clapping an apologetic hand on his son's shoulder. “Sorry, kid. Looks like she only listens to one Solo on this ship.”

It’s nice to watch his son’s cheeks turn a little pink--nice to catch the small smile Ben shoots the giggling girl in his arms. It's nice to watch Rey thoroughly enjoy her new vantage point, even though Han quickly realizes with a twinge that she’s probably never been held like that before. He doesn’t let the thought settle too deeply. Instead he reaches to poke her accusingly in the chest, a helpless smirk on his face as she dimples and twists in Ben’s arms. “Little menace.”

They settle into the lounge for a late breakfast before Chewie heads to the cargo bay, Rey tumbling off the seat to trail after him, insatiably curious. Han shakes his head, still dumbstruck that the kid knows any Shyriiwook at all.  
  
Han sighs. “If we’re gonna convince her to come with us, it’s gotta be today, kid. Falcon’s runnin’ on fumes. Can’t park her here forever.”

“I know.”  
  
“Luke any help?”  
  
“Sort of. It’s still going to hurt.”  
  
“‘Sure is.”  
  
“Dad...are we-“ His son’s anxious brown eyes find his. “Where is Rey going to stay when we-”  
  
“With us.” The answer is swift and firm. Han crosses his arms over his chest and leans back in his chair across the lounge. “Your mother and I had a pretty hefty conversation while you two were out the other day.”  
  
Han had known from the second Ben had taken the controls from him in Jakku’s atmo--eyes wild and sparkling and _certain_ . He’d known ever since his son had tumbled into the market tent, breathless, attention locked on the girl like she was a solar flare in a black hole. He’d known as soon as Ben had walked out of the AT-AT with a tiny bundle held carefully close to his chest. He’d known since the moment she’d woken up. Since Rey's first words: _is he okay?_ Since she first reached for Ben’s face, and every wide-eyed, hero-worshipping smile that followed after.   
  
Han had known from the beginning that nothing should separate these kids.  
  
_“The bureaucratic mess can be handled...easily enough, with her situation. And we have the means and the space, but...Han...do you think we_ should? _We can barely manage this parenting thing with our own son- hell, we can barely manage our own_ marriage _, let alone….”_  
  
_“Sweetheart, trust me. I’ve been ‘round and ‘round in my head about it since day one. But you have to trust me on this. You’ll know as soon as you see them for yourself, I swear it.”_  
  
_His wife had looked...anxious. Her usual poker face cast aside—a rare vulnerability. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”_  
  
_Han’s smirk hadn’t carried its usual foolhardy confidence, but it’d been genuine all the same. “I can.”_  
  
It _hadn’t_ been the end of the conversation--there’d been plenty logistical bickering before Ben and Rey had returned--but Han had known the deal was sealed.  
  
It was all right there in Ben’s shocked face, staring at Han with his mouth slightly open, eyes glassy with emotion. He seemed genuinely unable to believe it as he tripped over his words. “She won’t have to-? I thought we’d have to hand her off to Luke, or- or find her someplace else on Coruscant, or have to ask Maz to-”  
  
“Would you accept any of those options?”  
  
Ben swallowed. His gaze sharpened, eyebrows twitching downward as he met Han’s eyes again. “No.”  
  
Han nodded, having known it from the beginning. “Exactly.” He kicked his feet up onto the holo-board with a nonchalance he didn’t feel, but wanted his kid to believe. “Rey stays with us. It’s where she belongs. Hell, even Chewie knows it-”  
  
Before he can finish, Ben is out of the lounge seat and wrapping his arms around his father's neck in an awkward hug. " _Thank you_.”  
  
Han clears his throat and squeezes Ben back. “Don’t thank me yet. Stubborn little menace still has it out to age us all ten years before we leave this sandy hell.”  
  
He feels his son choke out a laugh, and there’s nothing quite like the feeling. _Finally,_ Han thinks. _I'm doing something right by you._

 

* * *

 

  
“Rey, let’s go for a walk.”  
  
“Okay! Wanna go back to that speeder I showed you?”  
  
“Uh. No. Let’s just- walk.”

 

* * *

 

  
  
“-and then Chewie said he liked my hair and I told him i liked his too and I think he might teach me more shyriiwook-”  
  
“Let’s sit here.” They turned their backs to the slowly setting sun so they could sit at the top of the sandy dune that overlooked Rey’s AT-AT--just far enough away for some privacy, and to effectively keep Rey from getting distracted by the Falcon and her two-man crew.  
  
Rey plopped herself so close that the entire left side of her body was pressed against his right.  
  
He’d thought he’d steeled himself for the conversation, but his gut still twisted uncomfortably as the next words fell stiffly from his mouth. “My dad- Han and Chewie and I-” Ben swallowed, “we have to leave tomorrow, Rey.”  
  
Her head whipped up to look at him. Ben looked down at her with apologetic eyes.  
  
“Tomorrow?” Rey choked. Her eyes were wide with alarm and shining and Ben knew this was how it was going to go down, but it still- “You- you can’t leave tomorrow! That’s too soon! It’s too soon- _that’s too soon, Ben!”_ She stood in a flurry of sand, looking down at him with what he could only describe as panic. Every tremble and crack in her voice sent a lance through his chest. “You can’t go! I can- there’s more rations in Niima, if you need them-! There’s more water and parts, we could trade more-”  
  
“We can’t stay on Jakku,” he interrupted gently. “Our home is back on Coruscant. My mom is back in Coruscant, waiting for us.”  
  
Rey’s face was slowly crumbling, her eyes full to the brim with unfallen tears. He was sure she couldn’t see anything out of them. Ben felt...helpless.   
  
“Rey, you can come with us, but it has to be your choice. You have to choose to stop waiting. You have to choose to leave your old family behind. If you want to be a part of our family- if you want to become my family...it has to be _your choice_.”  
  
Rey’s tears fall with a solemn silence uncharacteristic for a child her age. She’s looking at Ben with eyes too old for her. He doesn’t really know what else to do, so he just keeps talking.  
  
“You don’t belong here, Rey,” he says, voice fervent but gentle. “Neither of us know where your family is--and neither of us know if or when they’re going to return. But Rey-” and because he’s weak and needs the physical comfort for _himself_ at this point, he finally reaches to take her small hands in his, pulling her just the slightest bit closer, so he can look directly into her wet Hazel eyes. “If they loved you, they’d want you to be happy. Are you happy here?”  
  
Rey blinks, a few tears finally escaping. “I am when you’re here….”  
  
Ben nods. “And when we’re not here? Are you happy?”  
  
Her mouth twists and her voice is mottled when she brokenly confesses, “no.”  
  
_You are the only bait she’ll take,_ his uncle’s voice whispers. _Be honest_ . Ben remembers all over again how very unfair this all is for Rey--someone too young to be dealing with a choice so monumental. Too young to have been left alone for so long. The last thing he wants to do is make this harder for her--the last thing he wants to do is manipulate her. So, instead, he decides to hand her a confession of his own. “Can I tell you something?”   
  
She swallows and nods.  
  
“I wasn’t happy before, either.”  
  
Rey’s eyes are sharp on his as he rubs his large thumb over her tiny, sand-cracked knuckles.  
  
“Before this- before _you_ , I was lonely, too. Really, really lonely. My family is...broken. My dad- Han, he’s...gone a lot. My mom, too. There have been days- _weeks_ where I don’t see or hear from them. I realize now that I’m lucky to have them at all,” he squeezes Rey’s little hands again. “But in a lot of ways, I feel left behind, too....Forgotten. Abandoned.”  
  
The small, soft sobs of a child wrack through Rey now, the pain painted across her face a visceral, open wound. Ben feels a hot streak down his cheek and knows he’s crying, too.  
  
“When I found you, that went away. You took it all away, Rey. I don’t really know how, or why, but when I’m with you it’s- that loneliness disappears. Do you feel that, too?”  
  
She nods, the motion bumping her forehead against his until they’re resting against each other.  
  
“I know how unfair this decision is. I know why you want to stay, even though you hate waiting. But...you can choose me, Rey. I can be your family. Han and Chewie, Leia and Luke...we can all be your family. I’d be-” he lets out a tired exhale, “I’d be really, _really_ happy if you chose us, Rey.”  
  
She’s sobbing so hard it sounds painful as she gasps and hiccups for the air to reply. But when she does, it’s the most beautiful thing Ben’s ever heard.  
  
“Okay.” He leans back to make sure he heard her right. He takes her ruddy, wet cheeks carefully between his hands. She’s still crying, but her voice is clearer when she says, “I want you to be my family so _baaaad-_ ” and she dissolves into sobs that shake her tiny shoulders, but Ben tugs her into his chest, so it’s all muffled anyway.

He’s so relieved and tired and exultant that all he can think to do is sway them slightly from side to side as she cries and eventually wraps her little arms around his neck in an exhausted, endearing gesture.

It’s a while before they pull apart, both of their cheeks ruddy and tear-streaked. Her dimples are deep and genuine, though--smile so bright against her tanned face that it reminds him of that first bright flash of her force signature, when he thought he was seeing sun spots every time he blinked. Her smile is like that. A flash and lingering glow that distorts his vision.  
  
His little sun spot.

 

 

* * *

  
  
  
  
She’s standing on the landing pad outside Canthem House, listening for the familiar, rusty pulsors of the Millenium Falcon.  
  
Leia can’t remember the last time her emotions were this difficult to untangle. It’s a bitter-sweet cocktail of anxiety, excitement, and dread, though she’s pretty sure her curiosity tastes the strongest.  
  
It had been triggered by the glittering in her husband’s eyes during their comm; his crows’ feet and Solo Smirk warm with something like...peace. Han was never one to stay on the commlink for any longer than he had to, but this time had been something new. He’d seemed full to bursting.  
  
He’d talked at length about the girl, Rey, of course. Using words like “scrappy,” and “clever,” and (Leia’s personal favorite) “fierce.” It was clear that Han liked her more than he’d been prepared to--that she’d taken him by surprise.  
  
But it was the way he’d spoken about _Ben_ that had Leia’s curiosity peaked.  
  
_“Leia, I don’t even know how to describe it,”_ he’d said. _“It’s like they’ve known each other in another life. And you should just see how our son is, around her. It’s like- sweetheart, I tell ya...it’s like he’d been missing, all these years. I don’t know how else to describe it. Like Rey found him._ Our son, _Leia. You know he’d been talkin’ with me n’ Chewie nearly the whole ride to Jakku? Nervous and strung-out, yet there he was, in the cockpit with us, nearly the entire time.”_ Her husband had been smiling to himself, shaking his head a little as if he still couldn’t believe it. _“And then he healed Rey and they had this whole force magic moment and it was like Rey had shucked the last few years right off his skin. Ben just- lit up.”_  
  
She was _exultant_ to meet the new Ben.  
  
And nervous as all hell to make a good first impression on Rey.

Thankfully, as she’d told Han it would be, the process of making her an official citizen of Coruscant, under the protection and legal guardianship of the Organa-Solo family, hadn’t taken long. Deciding it would be best to keep things as quiet as possible while Rey adjusted to her new life, only a small, trusted circle of associates and holofilers were privy to the details. After the long comm with Han, Leia felt it would be best to keep everything as quiet as possible--for Rey’s sake, and for the sake of the rest of the family.  
  
She’d even decided to step away from her senatorial duties for a day or two in order to help settle the girl into Canthem House.

The familiar rumble of the Falcon had the hairs on her arms stand at attention, and, out of professional habit, Leia straightened her spine and raised her chin.  
  
Han and Chewie were the first to exit, her husband coming to greet her with a long-overdue embrace that helped ease her nerves. They looked tired from the trip, but amused. Leia’s brows pulled together with curiosity--what joke was she missing?  
  
The very last thing she’d expected was for her son to appear at the top of the ramp, one leg hefted on the wall as he tried his best to pull something out from behind the airlock hatch.    
  
Leia startled at the sound of Ben stumbling back and hitting the opposite side of the airlock. She was about to step forward when he twisted just the slightest to catch her eye and shot her a small smile and a soft, “Hi, mom, just a moment, sorry,” before shoving himself back into the Falcon to holler a loud, frustrated, _“C’MON, REY, SHE’S WAITING FOR YOU AND YOU’RE BEING RUDE,”_ up into the ship.  
  
The shock must have been written all over her face because Leia registered her husband’s raspy laugh beside her.  
  
She whipped her head up to look at him. “Is that really Ben?” She asked.  
  
Han just laughed harder.  
  
But as her son came back down the ramp--now accompanied by a tiny, human-shaped barnacle attached securely to his leg--Leia could see exactly what Han’d meant: Ben looked impossibly younger, impossibly _lighter_ , than he’d looked a mere week ago. “ _Like Rey had shucked the last few years right off his skin.”_  
  
Han was right.  
  
Ben was alight with color and warmth and- and something else...something new…  
  
“Hi. ‘Missed you.”    
  
_Self-assurance._  
  
Leia couldn’t keep her hand from lifting to his cheek if she’d _wanted_ to. “I missed you too, honey, so glad you’re back.” _In more ways than one._  
  
“Mom, this is Rey.”  
  
Leia finally managed to curb the incessant urge to assess this new, lighter version of her son in order to follow his arm down to the small, chestnut head of hair peeking out from behind his thigh.  
  
It didn’t take more than a nudge from Ben for the tiny girl to step out from behind his leg.  
  
Leia couldn’t help but smile at the brave lift in her chin. Rey's eyes were huge--like giant stained-glass windows of hazel that seemed to swallow her sweet, round face whole. She was tan and spotted with soft freckles. With a mother’s gaze, Leia’s eyes strayed helplessly to Rey’s thin limbs; muscles having developed where baby fat belonged.  
  
There was no use for pity, though--not for Rey. So Leia smiled and lowered herself to her eye-level. “I’ve been so nervous to meet you, Rey.”  
  
The girl’s brows pinched together.  
  
“You seem to like my boys so much already. I hope you’ll like me, too?”  
  
A tiny smile appeared.  
  
Leia took her hands in hers.  
  
It seemed to trigger something in Rey as she melted further and admitted, softly, “Ben does this, too.”  
  
Leia’s smile made her cheeks ache as she looked up at her son. “ _Does_ he?”  
  
“Yeah,” she said. When Leia drops her gaze back to Rey’s, she realizes the girl has dimples.  
  
The sweetest little dimples.  
  
Leia pulls her into a hug. “Welcome home, Rey.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments and kudos, guys. I know you hear it in nearly ever fic-writer's footnotes, but it's because it's a universal truth: your words of encouragement provide warmth and inspiration. Thank you so much for reading <3


	4. Chapter 4

“Rey, get _out_ of my room.”   
  
“Get out of _my_ room!”   
  
“Wh-This- _That doesn’t make any sense!_ ”   
  
“ _QUIT BEING A BANTHA BUTT!_ ”   
  
“HOW AM I A BANTHA BUTT FOR WANTING SOME PEACE AND QUIET _IN MY OWN KRIFFING ROOM?!_ ” 

Ben slams his hand on the pad, and as the door slides shut with a loud hiss, he’s finally banished the noisy 7-year-old from his room. She starts to pound on the door, hollering at him with a squeaky fury that gives Ben a headache.    
  
It hadn’t taken long for Rey to make herself at home in Canthem House, but it had taken a long, _long_ time to get her to realize she had her _own._ _Damn. Room._   
  
Usually Ben is amenable to her invasion of his personal space--more often welcoming it. He understands her aversion to being left alone for too long, especially in a house that’s so big and often solely occupied by them.

But it’s holoexam season, and he needs to get high scores if he wants to make it into the political science program at the Coruscant branch of Theed University, here in Galactic City. And having Rey hovering at the edges of his focus--flitting around his room, fussing with his things and humming whatever tune his father is likely responsible for lodging between her ears--is _not_ an effective way to study.   

But then once she’s gone, of course, all Ben can focus on is the distinct lack of her presence.   
  
He falls back into the chair and slams his head on his desk.  
  
It’s only been a year and a half since Rey had moved in. Only a year and a half’s worth of teasing and fighting and hollering at each other across the hall between their rooms. But it feels like she’s been here since the beginning.   
  
He sighs and picks up his datapad again.   
  
Ben’s managed to finish half of his essay and the remaining assigned holotext reading when he hears his mother’s daily, dry announcement: “I’m home, if anyone cares~!”   
  
He hears Rey launch herself out of her room and down the hall to greet Leia.   
  
It must be later than Ben realized. His mother never gets home more than an hour or two before Rey’s bedtime. He rubs his eyes and stacks the holotexts neatly on his desk before exiting his own room.   
  
His mother is shedding her formal robes at the entrance when he feels Rey’s petulant glare from where she’s standing at Leia’s side, taking a few bags of the groceries from his mother. He glares back as she scowls at him all the way to the kitchen.   
  
“What did you do this time?” His mother asks, eyes trailing after Rey and glittering with amusement.   
  
Ben rolls his eyes and steps closer to take the other few bags from his mother. “Nothing,” he insists tiredly. They follow Rey into the kitchen, depositing the groceries on the counter.  “I just wanted some peace and quiet to _study._ ”   
  
Leia laughs. Rey’s face pinches further in that way she insists is _not_ adorable, but absolutely is. She pulls herself up to stand on one of the bar stools, waits for Leia to come closer so she can kiss his mother’s cheek--their ritual--and jumps back off of the stool, stomping back to her room. She never closes her door, though. Even when she’s upset. It makes Ben smile ruefully to himself as he helps his mother unpack the groceries.   
  
“How’d you do?”   
  
She knows without having to ask, but Ben appreciates her asking anyway. “Fine. Passed it.”   
  
“Aced it, you mean.” His mother’s eyes are warm and full of pride when Ben meets them with a small smile.   
  
“Dad still on that job with Calrissian?” He hates the hesitance in his voice, but he can’t help it.   
  
“Yes. Comm’d me a few hours, ago, surprisingly--says he’ll be home in a few days.” Their eyes meet with mirrored exasperation. There’s fondness in his mother’s tone, though, when she continues, “Promises to stay longer this time.”   
  
_A hollow promise, and we both know it._ Ben gnashes his teeth together, still bitterly angry that his father had left on this particular run without saying goodbye even to Rey, who’d been down about it ever since.   
  
There’s a dull crashing from Rey’s room, followed by a muffled curse and an aggressive, _“I’M OKAY,”_ that breaks through the sudden, stilted silence (a talent of Rey’s, they’ve learned over time).   
  
Leia rubs her hand down Ben’s arm with a maternal sigh. Not in the mood to pursue the conversation any further, Ben ducks away from his mother’s eyes and nods towards Rey’s room. “I got it.”

 

  


* * *

 

 

  
He stands in her doorway for a moment, surveying the chaos of pieces and parts of a broken freighter model that Rey is lying at the center of, her limbs splayed in an ‘x’ and her despondent gaze fixed on the ceiling.   
  
“Did you just- break the model you’ve been working on for the last three weeks?”   
  
Rey nods from her place on the floor, eyes hollow and still locked above.   
  
“Did you do it on accident?”   
  
Another nod. Ben notices the slight quiver in her lower lip.   
  
He knows why she’s upset. It isn’t just the banishment from Ben’s room.   
  
He feels another lance of hot anger at his father. It isn’t like Rey expects much from Ben’s parents--she doesn’t feel the same gnawing in her stomach at their consistent absences or frequent plan-cancellations. Rey is more than satisfied with whatever time they can spare, just happy to have them in her life at all. But greetings and goodbyes...they mean a lot to her, Ben’s noticed. They offer a sort of ritualistic promise; that they’re back, that they’ll return. Such things cost nothing and take little time, and yet Han’s managed to brush it aside in increasing frequency like it doesn’t make _Rey_ feel brushed aside.     
  
It just- pisses Ben off.   
  
But his shit mood is the last thing she needs right now, so he swallows it and moves over the threshold to sit beside her. The mess surrounding them is...significant. Rey is lying on top of half of the parts and pieces, but Ben pries the still-mostly-intact wing lying under one of her knees, and starts piecing its missing bits back together with a methodical focus.   
  
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Rey rolling her head to look at him, opening her mouth to say something. He doesn’t want her to apologize, though, as he’s certain she’s about to, so he hurries to beat her to it. “Sorry for yelling at you. I just need to study harder than usual, this week. I need to focus.”   
  
Rey closes her mouth and sits up slowly, scooting back so she can survey the pieces, too. She picks up what looks like the other half-destroyed wing, and starts to reassemble it with all the care she usually does. “Okay,” she says softly. She’s very quiet as they sit on her floor, piecing together the wings of what Ben’s pretty sure is a T-16 Skyhopper. She looks...miserable.  
  
Ben feels guilty. He usually likes having her crowd his space. Enjoys it, even. With his mother at work all hours of the day and his father and Chewie nearly always off-world, Ben had used to hate being home--always alone. He’d almost gotten used to the echoing, hollow silence that made the whole place feel...cold...and empty. He never used to leave his room.   
  
But when Rey moved in...Canthem House finally started to feel like a home. She was always moving around or humming, loudly closing and opening cabinet doors and placing things on the table and counters in the noisiest fashion possible. Ben could always hear when she shuffled into the kitchen, when she’d turn on a holovid in the main room to watch while she ate, when she shuffled in and out of her room or the ‘fresher. She hadn’t shed her habitual, lumbering stomp when she’d moved in--clearly used to sand beneath her feet to absorb the clamor. But it was...nice. He’d started to leave his own door open, just so he could hear what she was up to. Like a soothing white noise. Rey made the house feel...cozier. _Lived_ in.   
  
Ben doesn’t want her to think he dislikes having her in his space when really, it’s the opposite.   
  
“Rey,” he says, setting the wing back down on the floor. “Let’s lay out the parts in the living room. The holo-light from the caf table will help you see the parts better, and the couch is a comfier place to study than my desk, anyway.”   
  
Her hazel eyes lift to his. “Are you sure you don’t want your _‘kriffing peace and quiet’_ ?”   
  
It comes out more cautious than caustic, but the guilt is buried under amused surprise at hearing her swear so casually. Ben laughs and covers Rey’s mouth with his hand. “ _Shh- y_ our _door’s_ open, laserbrain,” he whisper-shouts, teasing. “And yes, I’m sure, I’m sure. Just don’t say ‘kriffing’ in front of my mother, please.” They both knew Rey’d learned all the worst words from him. He didn’t need _another_ lecture.     
  
Ben could feel her smile against his hand right before she licked his palm.   
  
_“Oi!”_ He wiped his hand on his shirt and grabbed for her as she shot up from the floor to scoop the model’s remains into her arms. Her giggle was bubbly and careless as she ran out of her room and down the hall--a trail of parts slipping through her arms--into the living room, Ben on her heels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, Autonomee, for offering to beta this fic!  
> (I'm so excited. My first ever fic, and I have a wonderful beta already. So blessed.)  
> And, of course, thank you readers <3


	5. Chapter 5

Ben and Sotna have been classmates in the political science program for going on two years at the Coruscant Branch of Theed University. With twin reputations for general unfriendliness and an intense, intimidating focus in the classroom, it hadn’t taken long for them to gravitate together when it came to group projects and mandatory study sessions.  
  
Ben likes Sotna. She’s a serious, sensical twi’lek who embraces silence, and accepts the socially awkward. Ben even likes her rowdy human girlfriend, Paige, from the piloting program. The pair are studious, like Ben. Serious about their classes and intent to turn themselves into figures of value and service. They call Ben their friend, and he finds himself...doing the same.  
  
It hadn’t taken long before the three of them had established a comfortable bubble for themselves at the musty back section of the massive university archives. It’s at their table,  on a particularly strenuous night of classwork, that Paige heaves herself backwards in her chair, balancing on its back legs as she unleashes a gusty, dramatic sigh.  
  
Ben and Sotna don’t move an inch, merely lifting their eyes from their holotexts in mute askance.  
  
Paige bites her lip and collapses the chair back to the floor with a clamor that echos in the vast arches. “I need a roommate," she blurts.  
  
“Ah, this again.” Sotna just slides an expectant, slightly bored gaze to Ben.  
  
He watches warily as Paige leans over her datapads with a desperate edge in her voice. “I have to move out of my parents’ place. But Sotna’s in a studio, and I can’t fit my stuff in there.” Ben feels his eyes widen a little as it finally starts to sink in. “I can’t move out unless I have someone to split rent with.”  
  
Ben looks down at his holotexts and datapads for an excuse not to meet her pleading brown eyes. “I haven’t really-”  
  
“C’mon, Solo, _please_ ?” She begs. “I know you’re dying to move out of your mom’s place.”  
  
Ben grimaces. They all know it’s true, without Ben having to have said anything--he’s 20 years old, after all. He’s always wanted out from under his mother’s shadow, and moving out of Canthem House would be a significant step forward. Ben resolutely shoves Rey’s inevitable reaction to the back of his mind when he realizes it’s an impulsive offer that he ultimately...doesn’t want to refuse.  
  
“She’s already found a place,” Sotna intercepts casually, eyes already back on her holotexts. “‘Case you’re wondering.”  
  
Ben looks from Sotna back to Paige, whose face is so eager it’s disturbing.    
  
A few silent seconds pass between them before Ben scoots his own chair back and sighs. “Where.”

 

* * *

 

 

  
A few weeks and one harrowing conversation later, Rey is in--as he’d expected she would be--a galactic-sized huff.  
  
Her arms are crossed comically over her chest as she stands, stiff with youthful fury, in his doorway. “This is _stupid."_  
  
Ben barks a laugh.  
  
“I thought families stuck together." She stomps over to his bed and plops herself on it. “I don’t get why you want to leave. We’re all here.” 

Ben is shuffling datapads and models off of the shelf in the corner of his room. “One," Ben starts, "we're all _sometimes_ here. And two, that’s not how it works.”  
  
“ _Well-!_ ” Rey throws her arms up and Ben has to work hard not to laugh at her obvious temper tantrum. She’s just so small, and sort of awful at being angry. It makes her too tired.  “That’s how it _should_ work!”  
  
“Well, it’s not. It’s normal for kids to grow up and move out of their parents’ place.”  
  
“It doesn’t _sound_ normal. It sounds dumb and made-up. Doesn’t make _any_ sense.”  
  
Ben pulls the hover-box over to the other corner of his room to start sorting his clothes. “It makes perfect sense. When you’re young, you need your parents to take care of you. When you grow up, you take care of yourself. Starting by finding your own place to live. _That’s_ how it works.”  
  
“No, it doesn't!” Rey insists. She hefts herself up on Ben’s bed, snatching up the practice-saber he keeps by his headboard so she can swing it in her hands. She’s always needed something to occupy her hands when she’s upset. “I took care of myself and had my own place and I was _not_ a grown up. Who’d want to live by themselves when they can live where everyone they love is in one place?” Ben hears the practice-saber whoosh aggressively through the air. He pauses to look over at her.  
  
Ben forgets, sometimes, that Rey has not always been here, with him. That she lived a very different life, before the proper childhood she’s living now.  
  
He tosses the shirt he’d been holding into the hover-box and joins Rey. She bounces down to sit beside him. The practice saber is limp in her hands, resting between her legs that dangle off the side of his bed.  
  
“Rey, your upbringing wasn’t what it should’ve been. It should’ve been what you have now--here, with us--from the beginning.” His voice is gentle. Always gentle for Rey when it matters. “It’s not that I don’t want to live with you. Or be...further from the people I love. I just-” he sighs, running a hand through his hair as he figures out the best way to explain this to a 10-year-old. “I’m a grown man, now.” Their eyes meet, and Ben hopes he can articulate himself properly. “I have to...restart the cycle; find my own place, find my own work, find my own-” for some reason, ‘wife’ leaves a sour taste in Ben’s mouth so he opts for “-partner. Maybe have kids. And then they’ll start the cycle over, too, once they’ve grown up. But I can’t do all of that until I move out. See how that works?”  
  
Rey’s eyes are sharp on his. She’s always been a fierce listener, taking in and processing information quickly. But the look on her face spells ‘dissatisfaction’ as clear as if it were written on her forehead, and Ben thinks he must’ve mucked up his explanation. He’s about to start over when Rey abruptly lifts herself up and drops herself stubbornly in his lap. “'Still sounds dumb.” Her triple buns tickle his chin as she declares, “Made-up bantha fodder.”  
  
Ben winds his arm around her little midsection and scoots himself and his passenger back until he’s leaning against the headboard, with Rey tucked under his chin, his legs outstretched on either side of her shorter, splayed ones. It’s a familiar position; the same one he’s always pulled her into when reading to her before bed, or to keep her still while he finishes an assignment for class, or to simply keep her from falling off of the bed when she’s too tired to keep herself upright. He’ll miss it.  
  
His heart lurches. Suddenly there’s a whole flood of things he’s going to miss about this house.  
  
He’ll miss their mutual crowding of each other’s space. He’ll miss bursting into her room to scare her--he’ll miss her startled, “ _BANTHA BUTT!_ ” and catching the pillow she’d toss at him in spite. He’ll miss the tickling at the bottom of his feet as Rey sits criss-cross on his floor, drawing on them while he reads through his holotexts in his desk chair. He’ll miss letting her braid his hair as he leans against the foot of her bed, quizzing her on her assigned vocabulary for the week. He’ll miss her X-Wing model floating between their rooms, her giggle floating through his door with it. He’ll miss laying on her floor and growling into the carpet until he feels better about the shit day he’d had. He'll miss when Rey does the same.  
  
He’ll miss his mom’s ritual, “I’m home, if anyone cares~!” followed, every day, without fail, by the sound of Rey’s bare feet running into the main room to kiss her cheek. He’ll miss late-night dejarik games he and his mother still have credits on, Rey cheering on the underdog. He’ll miss family dinners, despite all his griping over them. He’ll even miss hearing his dad’s smokey voice drifting through the house in the early morning--the only time of the day Han can catch his wife for a private moment of catch-up and I’ve-missed-you’s.  
  
He’ll miss it all.

“Ben?”

“Yeah?”  
  
“I hate this so much.”  
  
Yeah...Ben sort of does, too.  
  
Worse, it doesn’t take any imagination to picture her alone in this house. His room empty and cold. The house quiet as it’d been before Rey came along. He doesn’t have to imagine how much Rey will hate it, because Ben had hated it, too. He reaches desperately for something about the situation to cheer them _both_ up. “Let’s just think of it this way: now you’ll have two homes.”  
  
She lifts an arm to her face--wiping something away, he thinks sadly--and twists to look up at him. “What?”  
  
“You can visit me whenever you want. You can bring any homework over you need help with. Or show me whatever ship models you’ve finished.” He brings a hand up to pinch one of her cherubic cheeks. “You can bring Paige and I drinks when we don’t want to get up.”  
  
Rey’s mouth quirks up at the teasing.  
  
“We can eat all the shit food we want. Turn up the holovids as loud as they go.” Her dimples make a final appearance, and a few of the knots in Ben’s gut unwind. “Nothing has to change, Sun Spot.”  
  
Rey turns her body around so she can hug him--he knew the nickname would do the trick--and he holds her close, rubbing circles on her small back.  
  
He pulls Rey in tighter for a moment before lifting his arms away entirely. “Alright, c’mon.” He says, voice gruff. “Help me pack up the rest of this shit so I can show you the new place tomorrow.”

 

* * *

 

  
  
Rey still can’t believe Ben would want to leave Canthem House, but she has to admit that she likes the compact apartment, having always been partial to tighter spaces, herself. She’s always thought they were cozier.  
  
Ben and Paige’s place is really cozy.  
  
The main room is littered with datapads and holotexts and several of Ben’s hover-boxes. There’s a caf table covered in holofiles and a couch that looks much more worn and plump than the one in Canthem House. Rey thinks it’s comfier, too, as she bounces on it a few times to gauge its softness. One of the walls is ceiling-to-floor plexi-screen, allowing for a pleasant view of the other eighth-floor apartments across the street, and the market district below.  
  
But Rey is quickly distracted from the rest when another girl, looking close to Rey’s age, pops excitedly out of the kitchen. She’s a little short, with jet-black hair styled as funny as Rey’s, and round pink cheeks that Rey thinks make her look especially cute. “ _HI!_ ” She shouts.  
  
Rey is startled by the volume, but offers a smile. “Hello.”  
  
“Are you Ben’s little sister?”  
  
Rey looks over her shoulder for Ben, but he’s already disappeared down the hall. She turns back to Rose with a half-shrug. “Sort of,” she answers. “We’re best friends.”  
  
" _Awesome_ ," Rose whispers on an exhale. She comes a little closer. “I’m Rose! Paige is my big sister.”  
  
“Oh!” Rey feels silly for missing the obvious familial resemblance. “Cool! I like Paige.” She’s only actually met her a handful of times, but Rey really _really_ likes Paige Tico. She’s loud and snorts when she laughs and is constantly chewing with her mouth open, like Rey does. The last time she’d seen her, Paige had taken Rey and Ben out to lunch on a day off, and she and Rey had given their seaweed rolls eyes and mouths and weird voices, much to Ben’s protesting groans. “Where is she?” Rey asks, peering into the kitchen.  
  
“She had to run a few datatapes over to Sotna’s,” Rose says. She’s looking at Rey a little funny before she blurts, “how old are you?”  
  
Rey blinks. “Ten?”  
  
Rose smiles triumphantly, her cheeks turning a happy pink that Rey thinks is really cute. “I knew it! I’m older than you!”  
  
Rey’s face scrunches a defensively. “Well, how old are you?”  
  
“Twelve.”  
  
Rose looks so self-satisfied as she crosses her arms that Rey rushes to defend her lesser years. “I’m taller than you, though.”  
  
Rose’s eyes trail up and down Rey’s frame. She feels immediately embarrassed and apologetic, but Rose just laughs and steps closer to take Rey's hand before leading her into the kitchen. “I’m making soypro scramble. Wanna help?”  
  
Rey lights up.   


* * *

  
  
  
  
_“I’m Rose!”_  
  
_“Ben,” he offered stiffly._  
  
_The kid was wide-eyed and hesitant as they shook hands. He still wasn’t good with kids. Rey was the exception to just about every rule--and this one most of all. She’d never been intimidated by Ben. Not even when they’d first met. But that was because Rey was a one-of-a-kind weirdo who made it easy for Ben to forget himself around other children. He was tall, with a natural scowl, dark eyes and a low voice, and sort of lumbered when he walked. “Intimidating” was probably a kinder word for his general manner._  
  
_But Ben could easily remember when the situation had been flipped; when he’d introduced Paige and Rey, and Paige had been kind to her. Rey was his family, Rose was Paige’s._  
  
_“I have a friend around your age,” he offered awkwardly._  
  
_Rose perked. “Really? Girl or boy? Older or younger?” Ben had to smile a little, her eager tumble of words reminding him of the other Tico. They exchanged smirks over Rose’s head._  
  
_“Girl,” Ben replied. “And you’ll have to ask her yourself when you meet her. She’ll be around the apartment sometimes, too, like you.”_  
  
  
  
Ben groans dramatically. He really should’ve known.  
  
The girls are huddled together, heads bent close over the nanostove as they survey their edible project. “You can’t shape it like that,” Rose titters, “it’ll look more like a slork than a bantha once it’s cooked.”  
  
Ben comes closer, arms crossed as he easily looks over their heads at the blob of scramble Rey’s so focused on shaping. “Mm. True.”  
  
Rose and Rey’s giggles fill the apartment, the tantalizing smell of food floating with the noise as they hear the entry door slide shut behind Paige. She makes a loud, dramatized sniffing sound before hollering, “IS THAT SOYPRO SCRAMBLE I SMELL OR DID BEN GET A NEW COLOGNE.”  
  
Ben rolls his eyes. Rey and Rose are laughing so hard it looks painful.  
  
Paige comes into the kitchen behind him, surveying the crying girls who are leaning on each other as they clutch their stomachs. She looks up at Ben and winks. “One home to another, eh?”  
  
All Ben can think is how kriffing glad he is that Rey somehow always fits herself so perfectly into every space he occupies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo can I get a hell fuckin’ yeah for the SoloSotnaTico friendship that came outta nowhere but hit me like a freighter to the heart? Of course Ben’s uni friends would be two badass lesbian nerds. Who the kriff else would be able to handle his geeky, emo ass? Man oh man. I just hope y’all are as here as I am for Ben all-my-friends-are-badass-girls Solo, ‘cus I don’t think anything makes me happier.
> 
> Anyway thanks again for reading and commenting! <3 The next few chapters are already written, and are a little more angsty. 'Specially Chapter 8 lol. The fluff will persevere, fret not, but we'll finally get a little tension and the first hint of romance, so I hope you'll stay tuned : D


	6. Chapter 6

Something gleams a few yards away, under the dim streams of hololight streaking down into Level 1782 of Coruscant’s Underworld.  
  
Rey knows it as 'Yard ‘82.'   
  
“Ludd, I found something!” She grabs her durasteel staff--the one Ben had recently gifted her for her 15th nameday--and hustles across Section 44 of the junkyard, scampering up the scrap heap. “I think it might be part of an old grav-car!”  
  
Ludd, a young Herglic Rey had befriended when she’d first discovered the junkyard, blows an excited snort from their blowhole as they climb up the hill until they’re close enough to see. “Ohh, repulsor vents! Think it’s the right size for our scrap-speeder?”

Rey surveys the vents carefully, using her forearm to measure. “Mmm, not sure. Might be too wide….We’ll have to take it back with us to see.”  
  
Ludd’s bulbous black head twists to look down the scrap pile at the blue holo-chron flashing in the center of the Section. “Ehh, I don’t know if we’ll have time today,” they burble. “Won’t Solo be on his way to pick you up?”  
  
She groans, “I didn’t even realize it was so late.” Rey stands and brushes the dust from her clothes. “ _Kriff_. I'm sorry Ludd. I guess you’ll have to stow it for the time being-”  
  
“Hey!”  
  
Rey and Ludd startle at the shout that cracks through the air. It echoes in the vast scrap yard as they look down to the foot of the pile, where three hooded figures are standing, staring up at them. “What the kriff’re two younglings like yourselves doin’ out here?”  
  
Rey glances at Ludd, who’s broad, six-foot figure is shrinking under the sudden, aggressive attention. Herglics are a peaceful, quiet race, and largely suspicious of other species. (It’d taken Rey weeks to convince Ludd that she just wanted someone to explore the 'yard with.) Feeling a flood of protective adrenaline, Rey grips her staff tighter and surreptitiously moves to stand between the trio and her friend. “We’re scrappers. And of-age to explore the Sections without supervision.”  
  
“That law only applies to Underworld natives, girly.” The man doesn’t sound necessarily threatening, but he sure doesn’t sound pleasant, either. The other figures remain eerily quiet, and Rey gets the unsettling feeling that their eyes haven’t left her since they’d arrived. “Your Herglic friend may be legal, but we’re gonna have to take you below to check your Level Access.”  
  
“What?" Rey’s grip on her staff is so tight her knuckles are white. “I’m not going with you, I’ve never even heard of ‘Level Access’!”

His only reply is to lift his hand, fingers splayed.  
  
Suddenly she is being bodily _yanked_ down the heap.  
  
Rey knows what this is.  
  
“Let me _go_.” The words are clenched between her teeth. The feeling of terror as she’s levitated closer and closer to the three figures below is quickly buried under her fury at being _controlled_. Rey struggles, hard. Hard enough that her muscles ache--spikes of pain shooting up and down her limbs and blurring her vision as she continues to fight. One arm is nearly free, she can _feel_ it, and if she can just lift-

 _“GhK-!”_  
  
A scream nearly rips from her throat under the tripled onslaught of pressure. The other hooded figures have their arms raised, now.  
  
"Rey!”  
  
She’s never heard Ludd shout like that before. Rey wishes she could move her head enough to look back at her friend.

Realizing that she’ll have to fight smarter than harder, she relaxes her muscles entirely and closes her eyes.

She hasn’t done it since she was a kid. Not since Ben had decided he didn’t want anything to do with the force, and Rey had done the same, following his lead. There’s no knowing if he can hear her--if he’s even _able_ to hear her, after all this time--but it’s all she can think to do.

She throws all of her mental focus and strength into opening the connection, and calls out for him.  

Then she opens her eyes and calls out a quick, “Ludd, I’ll be okay-!” She’s knocked unconscious before she can finish.

 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  
Rounding the final corner, Ben steers his bike down a narrow, dark alley, lit only by the dull, neon glow of holo-lights scattered up the high walls. Ben gradually slows his speeder. He detaches the igniter and parks it just beside the entrance.  
  
The battered portal that leads directly down into the junkyard level of the Underworld is a well-hidden trade secret. Ben wouldn’t know about it at all if it weren’t for-  
  
_  
_

_Ben_  
_Ben_  
_-an echo, growing in volume until it finally breaks the surface with a reverberating shout._  
  
**Ben!  
**

  
The mental impact knocks the wind out him in the middle of the alley. He doubles over, breathless.  
  
That was Rey’s voice.

 _That was Rey’s voice_.  
  
Ben slams open his connection to the force to hear her better. It hurts--too much, too soon, after too long, all at once--and the pain muddles the connection.  
  
Physically, there’s no conscious decision or hesitation before Ben is vaulting himself into the portal and punching the level code into the pad with shaking fingers. Mentally, Ben is careening, half-blind, into the force-plane he’d first found Rey in years ago.    
  
But the plane isn’t the serene, noiseless place that he and Rey had last met in.  
  
This void shivers and crashes around him--darker than ever. _Louder_. Ben recognizes the worried static, the dark rumble of fear. Panic that pulses like something sentient.  
  
Not all of it is his.  
  
The realization slams into Ben like a wall of ice.  
  
Are you hurt?! Where are you?!     
  
His vision splits until he can see the physical and the non-physical--until he’s stumbling through both Yard ‘82 and the roiling force-plane.  
  
_Rey?!_ REY, WHERE ARE YOU?!

He spots a figure in the hollow distance and _runs_.

 

* * *

 

 

Rey shivers herself awake.  
  
The cold overwhelms her first. Her muscles are tight and contracting where she lies strapped to a sheet of frigid metal. There’s a throbbing ache in her temples and behind her eyes. It’s something- muted, in the back of her mind. Something force-related? She thinks her abductors might have done something, but it hurts too badly to pursue, and she’s too drained to try.  
  
A pale face blurs a little to her right, hovering above. “Ahh _._ ..there she is.” There’s a stupid gap between his front teeth that makes his sneer look extra stupid, if you ask Rey.  
  
She’s a block of ice, but her eyes are ablaze when she bares her teeth in what she hopes is threatening. Really it’s an excuse to lock her jaw—to keep her teeth from clicking together with shivers.  

“Ohhh, feral thing, you are,” he mocks. “Cozy in your cage? We turned up the air cooler. Helps temper a skinny, untrained thing like you from usin’ your little force tricks.” His eyebrows do a stupid dance on his face, as if she’s in the mood to do anything but insinerate him with her baleful glare. “We happen to be on the hunt for force-sensitives in these parts, you know. And _you-_ ” He pauses, Rey feels him lean closer, his face sharpening into uncomfortable focus. Her entire body is frigid and tense. “-Well. You, precious, are a bit of a quantum bomb.” He smiles down at Rey, and she wishes she could kick his kriffing teeth out. “Might even be the one we’ve been waitin’ for.”  
  
_What?_  
  
“Anyway, sit tight, precious,” he says, patting the sheet of metal she’s strapped to as he straightens and turns to leave. “I’ve got a conference call.”  
  
The door makes an echoing, metallic _clang_ as it shuts behind him.    
  
The cold seeps further into Rey’s skin like needles piercing bone. Who the _kriff_ are they waiting for? It can’t possibly be her. _I’m nobody,_ she thinks _._ It’s a mistake. A massive mistake.  
  
Her jaw is still clenched, her muscles still cramping with shivers. It doesn’t take long before she starts go numb--a bad sign, she’s sure--but she uses the reprieve to help sharpen her focus. There’s something in the back of her mind- she just needs to breathe.  
  
She closes her eyes, exhales through shivering lips, and-

 _-ARE YOU?!_  
  
Rey wants to _cry_ with relief. _Ben!_  
  
_REY! Rey, where- I-I can’t_ **see** ! _How far down in the levels-_  
  
_Somewhere in the thousands, I think._ She opens her eyes again, squinting painfully at the small room she’s in. _Can you see now?_ She asks, still unsure how this connection works. She takes in the dingy, frigid room. The light is so dim, she can hardly see herself. _I can’t tell, I’m- it’s just really really cold, that’s all I know._ His answering panic is so extreme through the force-channel that it redoubles her own. Ben I can’t tell which level- I didn’t see--they knocked me out before I could-  
  
Something hot and intense slices through the panic. Rey can taste it in the back of her throat--acidic.

 _Who?_ His voice is sharp and echoes as it lashes across the connection, icier than the room she’s trapped in.  
  
_Three humans, I think. Force-users--that’s how they got me….Ben I’m trying- I’m trying_ really _hard not to be, I promise, but- I’m really_ **scared** _._  
  
The answering silence is deafening.  
  
_...Hello?_  
  
...  
  
_Ben?!_  
  
Nothing. The connection feels- severed.  
  
_No no no, Ben,_ no _, please don’t go!_ Rey feels terribly young as she feels warm tears pooling in her eyes.  
  
There’s a rumble of something through the connection, but the door clicks open before she can call out to him again, and Rey forces herself to smooth the features on her face, blinks the tears back as Gap Tooth strides in with something clutched in his hand-  
  
A lightsaber.

He ignites it, and a neon maroon light floods the dingy room. Rey struggles wildly in her bonds as he comes closer, face thrown into sinister shades of red and black. “There’s another one of you,” he says, hovering above her. “A young man, Boss says. Where is _he_.”  
  
Rey doesn’t answer.

“I can play this game a lot better than you can.”

Rey stills, but remains silent. If he’s too stupid to realize that she has literal lockjaw from the cold, that’s his problem.

He raises his saber and slices down. Rey flinches, but the neon blade comes to a stop just above her neck. The heat radiating from it sends a fresh ripple of terror over Rey. “I d-d-don’t know wh-what you’re t-t-t-t-” she cuts herself off, pausing to _force_ herself not to stutter through the cold clamp of her teeth. “- _Talking_ about.”

“My boss is looking for a pair of force-sensitives, like you. Says you know each other real well.” Rey can’t focus at all over the sound of the lightsaber humming dangerously in her ears. She doesn’t answer.  
  
His jaw clenches, and without further preamble he lowers the saber so it kisses her neck, just beneath her right jawline. Rey screams. It’s a brief, but white-hot, _searing_ pain.  
  
“Try again, preciou-”

There’s a quick, muffled _BANG_ as something collides with the steel door. Gap Tooth startles, his blade-wielding hand twitching, and Rey lets out another feral, broken shout of pain when it slices into the shell of her ear. The sound is shattered, her voice having already been scrubbed raw from cold and disuse.  
  
There’s a short silence after it dies on her tongue, and then a loud, continuous bellow of fury, followed by another muffled, louder _THUD_.  
  
_“REY!”_ She hears outside.  
  
She closes her eyes for a moment at the sound of his voice. _I’m in here, Ben--green door!_  
  
Suddenly the force-channel is blown wide open, and the vivid _feeling_ of him--crashing back into her head, flooding her senses--hurts. Rey can feel _everything_.

She flinches.  
  
Ben is beyond fury. Ben is-  
  
He’s _murderous_.

Gap Tooth looks down at Rey with glittering eyes and a manic grin, his saber still hovering at her neck. “‘That him?” He seems to know the answer without her saying anything.

Ben bursts through the door. Rey can hardly see him with the neon glow of Gap Tooth’s saber so close to her face, her vision spotty from it. She _feels_ Ben’s eyes on her, though.

Gap-Tooth is stupid enough to continue talking. “Boss warned us about you. The ‘Skywalker heir’. Told us you’d get in the way.”

Suddenly the lightsaber’s beacon disappears with a harsh _whoosh_ , and the cold assaults Rey anew. Her eyes are still adjusting- she can’t _see._ She thinks her captor is starting to say something, but it chokes off. Rey can make out the vague outline of a raised fist, before she hears it collide, _brutally_ hard, with what she hopes is Gap-Tooth’s face. She hears his body hit the ground with a hollow thud. It’s followed by a shuffle, and Rey can tell without seeing--can tell through the unsettling vibration of the room--that Ben is beating the man into the concrete floor.  
  
Then a pale face appears above her. Fuzzy as it is, Rey would know it’s him with her eyes closed. There’s a hiss and four, simultaneous ‘clicks’, and Rey is released. She slides numbly off of the metal sheet and into Ben’s arms. He scoops her up; one arm supporting her back, the other behind her stiff knee-joints.  
  
She’s shivering so hard that her body is spasming with it. Ben’s head is still a blazing chaos of panic and rage. “Y-you need to c-c-ca-calm down-n, B-Ben.” Her consonants strain and stick on her tongue with her shivering, and she hates it. She wants him to know she’s been strong. Terrified, but strong. Stuttering like this makes her sound weak to her own ears, but she has to say it out loud. “I’m f-f-f-f-” she has to pause for a moment to get her _kriffing_ lips to work. “-F-fine.”  
  
He doesn’t reply, physically or mentally. She feels a burst of balmy air on her skin as they finally exit the room. Rey closes her eyes against the warm sting, face buried in Ben’s heat.  
  
She hears the hiss of a door sliding shut, and feels the upward-jerk of an Underworld turbolift.  
  
Everything else is drowned out by Ben. He’s everywhere; filling her head, her senses, surrounding her entirely. Even as chaotic and furious and scary as the feelings pouring through the connection are, there’s no place she feels safer. All at once, the adrenaline seeps out of her. She gives into the security of Ben’s warmth, and passes out.

 

* * *

 

 

  
If he wasn’t so focused on the body cradled to his chest, Ben is certain he’d fly to pieces. He’s a shaking, furious mess, and can’t get a handle on it.  
  
Her scream is the only thing he can hear. His ears ringing with it.  
  
He takes in a shaky few gasps of air, and looks down at the sleeping, shivering girl in his arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again I'm so so sorry my updates are so slow! I swear to you, I have the next THREE chapters mostly done, I just obsess over the details, and am constantly changing and rearranging and working to make each chapter as perfect as it can be lol
> 
> Thank you so so much for reading! I can't tell you how fun it is to read all of your comments <3


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a playlist for this fic when I first started it, and this chapter was heavily influenced by the soft piano in the song “You” by Petit Biscuit. The rest of the little playlist I've made is in the footnotes, in case anyone's curious : >

_I’m really_  
_I’m really_  
**_I’m really_ ** **scared  
**  
Every sound echoes around her, and there’s no light--just an infinite, black tunnel. She moves forward, heart in her throat, echoes in her ears.  
  
A door appears, vivid in front of her. Pale green, rusted at its edges and around the ancient keypad.  
  
She hears a terrible scream from behind it. She _feels_ it like it’s ripping her stomach in two. Something subconscious recognizes that it’s her screaming, but in the dream all she knows is that she needs to be on the other side.  
  
She roars, the pitch low and feral. It isn’t her voice but it feels like it is. Everything vibrates with it; the black space, the door, her vision, her ears, her blood.

 _Ben_  
_Ben_  
**_Ben?!_ **  
  
_Please_  
_Please_  
**_Please don’t go-!_ **  
  
_I’m really_  
_I’m really_ _  
_ **_I’m really_ ** **scared.**

More echoes.  
  
Indistinct figures appear and converge around her. When they lunge, she feels rage boil and crack under her skin like lava. These aren’t her hands, her arms, or her legs. The muscles are thick and tense with dark energy--the figures _snap_ under it. She doesn’t kill them, but it’s close, and everything inside of her wants to--so, so badly.    
  
When she reaches the door, it’s locked.  
  
She pounds and hollers a name, “ _REY!”_   brokenly, over and over. But it’s locked, and all the power and force in the universe can’t open it.

The screaming continues—it tears and _aches_ until she can’t tell who’s screaming-  
  
  
  
  
Rey gasps awake.  
  
She chokes on the darkness of the room, coughing as if the rough tearing in her throat had been real-  
  
“ _Rey-?!”_    
  
Her heart kicks at the sound of Ben stumbling out of his room, not bothering to turn on the hololight as he crashes into her dark door frame.  
  
“Wha- were you- was that a dream-? Did you- did _I-_ ” she’s still so startled and sleep-fuzzy, everything tumbles out breathless and confused. “What _was_ that?” She heaves.     
  
The wild look in his eyes fades with her words, and he slumps in the doorway before lumbering slowly into the room. “A dream,” he grunts. His chest is heaving like Rey’s, face as colorless and clammy as hers. Before he can sit on the floor, Rey takes his arm and pulls him down into the bed with her.  
  
They arrange themselves the way they always have; Ben’s back against the headboard, Rey’s back to his chest. Her  racing heart finally starts to slow.

There’s a long silence as they run sleepy diagnosis’ on each other. Making sure they’re both here, now, and not stuck back in that cold, echoing void.  
  
“Sorry,” Ben says softly.  
  
“Don't be. You can’t help it,” she reassures. “Ben...is that- what it felt like?...Being on the other side of the door?”  
  
“Yes.” Ben’s head is leaning against the wall, but his chin brushes the top of her head that’s leaning against his collarbones. She feels his jaw moving--feels the deep reverb from his chest in her spine--as he replies. It soothes her further. “Been a while since I’ve felt that...helpless.”  
  
She knows what he means. She’s still mad at herself. Feels like she should’ve done more--outsmarted the enemy, channeled all that force power she allegedly has, or at least...she doesn’t know. It just pisses her off that those kriffing thugs had forced she and Ben to feel like that.   
  
Her stomach churns at the frigid memory.  
  
_“The Red Crescent doesn’t care what breaks so long as we find what we’re lookin’ for.”_  
  
_“There’s another one of you. A young man, Boss says. Where is_ he _.”_  
  
She still doesn’t understand. She can’t piece any of it together, and she knows she needs to talk to Ben’s uncle Luke. If anyone might know something about a gang of dark force-users, it’s him.  
  
But it’s not time to think about that yet.    
  
“I’m okay….”  
  
She feels one of Ben’s hands come up to gently feel for the bacta patch on her ear. They both know it won’t do anything but cool the sting--a lightsaber cauterizes the wounds it inflicts. Best-case scenario, it’ll scar, and the tissue won’t be too dead to heal itself over time. “You were still hurt. And I haven’t-” he takes a deep breath. Rey closes her eyes, her chest rising with his. “I haven’t felt anger like this in a long time. It’s...difficult to contain.”

His arms fall away.  
  
Silence stretches for a while longer before she twists to face him.

**POV switch -- Ben  
**

She turns in his arms and brings their foreheads together, an echo of her six-year-old self. Always consoling him when it should be the other way around. The instant they touch, Ben feels his lungs fully expand, his eyes fall closed, and his clammy skin warm. It’s like this, sometimes, when they touch. Almost like a force-heal, but it seeps from the outside-in. He feels her like he had that day—an orange glow, burning up the edges of his vision. _His sun spot._  
  
“I’m sorry, Rey. I’m still so _angry_ .” Even through clenched teeth, his voice breaks. “I can’t stop remembering your shivering, your scream….” He trails off. “I keep-” his lips shiver, trying to reign everything in. He wants to reach out for her, but not while his blood simmers with the fresh dream. “These last few nights, all I see is his lightsaber over your throat. Only in my dreams I’m always _too late_ -” he chokes.

It was still mostly a blur: getting her back to Canthem, comm’ing his parents. Leia had come home with the family physician, and Ben can half-remember sitting in the main room with his father and Chewie in uneasy silence as Rey was tended to.  
  
Rationally, everyone in the house had known she was fine. That the wounds were minor and would heal quickly.  
  
But she’d become the planet around which Ben’s family orbited. The threat of losing her had shaken them all out of alignment; Ben can’t remember the last time he’d seen his father’s steady hands tremble, can’t remember the last time he’d heard his mother’s firm voice shake. Even Chewie had fallen into deferential silence.  
  
Rey’s voice is soft in his ears, gently pulling him back to the present. She shakes her head a little. “I still don’t know how to sort everything out, yet.” She offers a weak smile. “Still sort of numb, to be honest. But I’m kind of glad you’re angry. Enough for the both of us.”

“You _deserve_ to be angry, Rey.”

“It’ll hit me at some point, I guess. For now-“ she yawns, “I’m too tired. I just want…” she pauses and lifts her forehead away from his to better look at Ben.

He searches her eyes.

“I just want to stay home for a few days.” She swallows. Her next words are slow, and so quiet Ben has to listen especially close to catch it. “With you, if that’s- okay?”

It bothers him that she thinks he’d do anything else. But this is no space to argue. It’s peaceful, and safe, and even with the dark anger still gnawing at his insides, Ben doesn’t want to shatter it. “I’ve already called out of work for the next two weeks, Sun Spot.”  
  
Rey’s body dissolves back into his chest, arms wrapping around his midsection as her cheek squishes into his black t-shirt. He wraps her back up in his arms, and they fall asleep in an exhausted heap.

* * *

  
  
  
The stubborn, survivalist half of Rey knows that she’s fine--that she shouldn’t be missing lessons and making so much trouble for Ben. But the half of her that is fifteen and still processing having been _abducted…_ that half of Rey doesn’t want to be left alone.  
  
That half of Rey wants to plead with Leia to stay home from work so she can curl into her side on the couch and watch trashy holovids. Wants to clutch the back of Han’s shirt, like she had when she was a kid, and trail around behind him as he runs routine maintenance on the Falcon. Wants to bury her face in Chewie’s fur and toss inside jokes back and forth in Shyriiwook. That half of Rey wants to ask--wants to beg--but doesn’t.  
  
Instead, she lets herself bask in Ben’s vigorous force-glow, warming herself by it like a fire. She can’t help it--she _likes_ how clingy he’s been. She’s so greedy for all of his hovering and extra attention it should be embarrassing. It should make her feel guilty or ashamed of herself.

But it just doesn’t.    
  
“I burned the grilled cheese three times.” He grouses from the kitchen. “Here’s a plate of impressively arranged fruits and cheeses instead.”  
  
Rey is infinitely thrilled that she’s gotten Ben to agree to wearing their pajamas all day. It’s satisfying to watch her best friend--lately seen almost solely in formal suits--lumber out of the kitchen in nothing but a black t-shirt, plaid boxers, and tube socks. Hulking as he is, Rey thinks he’s never looked so boyish.  
  
She takes the plate from him, resting it in her own pajama-clad lap. She’s opted for her short, athletic sleeping shorts, a pair of mismatched knee socks that have already slipped halfway down her shins, and one of Ben’s hand-me-down shirts she’s worn holes in since she was eight. “ _So_ impressive. Only a real artist could make a plate this pretty. Wow. Bravo. Color me stunned.”  
  
With the back of his hand, he slaps at her bent leg resting on the caf table to get her to move it, so he can collapse onto the couch beside her. “Such a fifteen-year old,” he grumbles. “Shut up and eat.”  
  
He’s crowded into her left side like a black furnace. It sends a happy shiver up her spine, being sandwiched between the armrest and all six-foot-two-inches of Ben.  
  
He turns on their favorite action holovid--the one they’ve memorized and driven Leia nuts over, having rewatched it into the ground.  
  
She and Ben only half-watch it, though, opting mostly to play a lazy round of King of the Couch, kicking lazily and trying to dislodge the other from their place. Ben wins, naturally, because he’s a _behemoth_ and can just crowd her off. Rey’s on the floor, attention momentarily back on the holovid instead of reinstating her place on the couch.  
  
She makes an irritated noise when she feels his leg still pushing at her contorted back. When she glares back at him, he’s the picture of ease: fully reclined with one arm behind his head, smug grin on his face, and his dangling leg nudging her spine. “Quit it, butt wipe, I’m off the couch already! And you’re missing the best part-“  
  
They both mouth the lines the hero delivers in perfect sync. Rey levels serious eyes on him as she continues to recite dialogue, just to make him smile. He does.  
  
They’re in the kitchen looking for more snacks when Rey realizes that she can feel him again through the new, weird force-connection. She can sense the contentment in his slow pulse, the pleasant, sluggish feeling he’s had most of the day. It’s as if she and Ben are occupying one body.  
  
“What are we going to do about this?” She knocks her knuckles into the side of her head, other elbow resting on the kitchen island between them. “I can feel you again. You’re too full to keep snacking, but you’re gonna snack anyway.”  
  
Ben snorts. “You can’t feel that.”  
  
“Yes I can,” she asserts offhandedly. “I know you can feel me, too. My ear?”

A tense flash of discomfort flits across Ben’s face. Rey knows he’s feeling the sting of her healing wound.  
  
She doesn’t want to brush the subject off anymore. She sort of can’t. Especially when they’re spending the next few weeks in each other’s pockets. It’s been three days, now. Three days of the force-pull; echoes of sensations, flickers of each other’s thoughts or feelings. The connection isn’t obtrusive, but it’s- distracting. Sometimes a dim glow in the base of her neck, sometimes a warm hum up her spine, like now.  
  
“I’m sorry about that first night. I didn’t mean to wake you. Or- scare you.”  
  
“You didn’t scare me. And that’s not what I’m talking-”  
  
“I know, but I don’t know what else to say, Rey,” he sighs, running a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what it is, but I don’t think either of us can control it.”  
  
Rey’s never been afraid so say what Ben doesn’t want to hear, but it’s always a little- extra awkward, to bring up his uncle. He’s even more absent than Han, in Ben’s life. Rey herself has only met him a handful of times (once when she was eight, and he’d offered to school her on Yavin, if she was “ever inclined,” and a few times since, on her 9th, 11th, and 13th namedays).  
  
Still, she knows it needs said. “We should ask Luke.”  
  
Ben grumbles something, eyes intent on the fruit he’s slicing.  
  
“What?”  
  
“I don’t want to.”  
  
Rey snorts. “Mature.”  
  
He glares up at her for a moment before returning his attention to the fruit. “Luke doesn’t know everything,” he says.  
  
Rey feels almost guilty she reminds him, “You know Leia’s comm’ed him already, right? That he’s on his way?” She tries (unsuccessfully) to catch his eye again. “We might as well ask.”  
  
He just grunts again. Rey sighs. She doesn’t want to ruin the mood, so she doesn’t press. For now.  
  
Instead, she leans her chin to rest on her arms and watches him. He’s deft with the knife--has always been good in the kitchen, having had to cook for them more often than not.  
  
Rey remembers every time she’s been in this exact position, through the years, watching him as he baked, grilled, reheated, sliced, and seared. She remembers antagonizing him by hovering at his elbows. Crawling between his legs and tugging at his shirt and hiding utensils under the sonic sink. She can remember all of his grunting and swatting her away. All the times he gave up and let her lick the spoon or flip the flatcakes herself. She smiles a little to herself at the memories. There are so many of them.

She starts to reminisce out loud. Ben joins in with his own memories; of her “hanging around like a gnat” and getting his arm or hand or fingers burned every time she demanded his attention.  
  
Story after story pour out of them. Rey is in tears at some of his dry retellings. He’s so much funnier than he gives himself credit. A natural-born storyteller, like his dad.  
  
It’s been a long time since they were last in the kitchen like this. It’s been so long since she’s had him to herself--since she’s had really _any_ lengthy quality-time with Ben. Especially in the last few years, his new job has kept him busy. She’s immensely proud of him, and has kept carefully tight-lipped about her loneliness in his absence. She _wants_ him to be successful. He deserves nothing less.  
  
But the loneliness has definitely...stung. It’s why Poe had shown her the Underworld in the first place. It’s why she’s been spending so much time with Ludd in the junkyard, working on their bike. Why she’s nearly always comm’ing Rose to see what she’s up to after lessons. It’s why she’s practically _living_ on Ben and Paige’s couch, in hopes of catching even a sliver of time with him.  
  
Her gaze catches on his forearms as they flex from the fruit-slicing. Her cheeks pool with warmth. He squints a little at her.  
  
There’s a silence and Rey decides to look anywhere but at him, trying not to be obvious and probably failing. What’s new.  
  
“What’re you thinking? Why is your stomach doing that?”  
  
“I knew you could feel it,” she grumbles. Embarrassed.  
  
“Why are you embarrassed? You can feel me, too.”  
  
“Yeah but you’re a _grown up_ .” She huffs. “You feel things so fast, and everything’s sort of mixed-up and hard to untangle and complicated. I can never actually tell what you’re thinking.”  
  
It’s his turn to look away. “Good. Don’t need you mucking around in there.”  
  
In retaliation, she snags a fist-full of the freshly-cut fruit he’s just set aside, and shoves it all in her mouth.  
  
“Mature,” He deadpans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still have such a hard time finding JUST the right tracks for this fic, and for Reylo in general--I'm super picky lol--but here's the general vibe (in my head, anyway!) of this fic, in case anyone's lookin' for a soundtrack <3 
> 
> I Still See Your Face -- San Holo  
> Follow You-Tep No Edit -- Jamie Brown  
> Heights -- Shallou  
> Best Part of Us -- AmPm, Michael Kaneko  
> To My Soul -- Jerry Folk  
> Sunset Lover -- Petit Biscuit  
> Lights -- Gvonni  
> Find You -- Nick Jonas  
> Memories -- Petit Biscuit


	8. Chapter 8

Han and Chewie are off-planet. (Surprise.)  
  
Leia is at work. (Shocking.)  
  
So it falls on Ben and Rey to greet Luke. (Typical.)  
  
It’s midday when Ben’s uncle parks his single-seater transport on the landing pad outside of Canthem House. Rey jumps off the couch. Ben lumbers slowly out through the garage after her.  
  
Luke Skywalker has a habit of turning up amidst incoming bad news. Or when Ben’s mother needs back-up to _deliver_ bad news. So Ben thinks the sinking feeling associated with his uncle’s visits is perfectly valid. He stands at Rey’s side as Luke approaches.

“Ben. I’ve missed you, kid.”  
  
Ben stiffly steps into his uncle’s open arms. “Likewise.” If Luke can feel the awkward dread in the tense set of Ben’s shoulders, he says nothing. Only smiling in that typically cryptic way of his that makes Ben’s eye twitch.  
  
Luke’s greying brows fly up as he turns from Ben to his shorter counterpart. “Sith spit, is this really Rey?”  
  
_He makes that joke every time,_ Ben thinks, resisting an eye-roll. Rey steps forward with a small smile. “You make that joke every time.”  
  
“It’s because you’re growing faster than my old eyes can keep up with, young one.” He squeezes her in a much more natural, familial embrace than the one he’d shared with Ben. Luke’s gaze sharpens and the warm smile fades from his face as he holds Rey by her shoulders. “Heard you had quite the week.” He lightly brushes the bacta tape lining Rey’s ear. “Feeling better?”  
  
Ben can feel Rey tamping down her mild irritation at the words. He knows she wishes people would stop asking if she’s okay. She’s never liked being coddled. Still, she smiles, and it’s somehow genuine. “I’m fine. Hardly feel it at this point.”  
  
**_Bullshit_** , Ben thinks pointedly at her.

They exchange glares.   
  
“I heard that.” Rey and Ben’s eyes whip back to Luke. “Just in case you forgot, I have that pesky force thing, myself.”  
  
Ben _does_ roll his eyes at that. Rey laughs.

 

  
x   

 

  
  
**POV Switch--Rey**  
  
“So you can hear each other?”  
  
“Not- always?” Rey says. “It’s kind of murky. So far it’s just feelings, or moods. Sometimes physical impressions of hunger or pain, rarely full thoughts. I think they have to be sort of- on purpose.”

They’re in the kitchen, because that’s where Rey and Ben feel the most ownership in Canthem House. Luke and Rey are sat at the bar, watching Ben take his time fixing a snack plate (an obvious excuse to keep his hands busy and turn his back on the conversation topic, but no one comments).  
  
“When exactly did it start?”  
  
Ben glances over his shoulder at Rey. She stares at his back with faraway eyes, idly playing with the tea bag in her mug. “When I was kidnapped. I don’t know how I did it, to be honest. It was instinctual.”  

Luke hums. “And you, Ben?”  
  
There’s a pause. Rey can feel his discomfort with the subject.

Last night, Rey’d had to needle at Ben like a hothpecker until he admitted why he didn’t want to tell his own uncle—a Jedi master—about their force link. All he’d really said was, _“It’s between you and me. Luke will probably- overgrandise.”_ Which Rey didn’t really get. She wanted to hear whatever insight Luke may have, and she figured Ben would be grateful for it later, too. Even if he didn’t admit it. 

Ben slices the cheese with extra focus. “Since I used the force-heal on her. Nine years ago.”

“What?!” Rey blurts.  
  
Ben doesn’t turn. Luke snorts into his mug before taking a thoughtful sip.  
  
Rey rounds the bar to smack Ben’s arm, glaring up at him. “Woulda been nice to know!”  
  
“Ow.” He says, completely unhurt, voice flat. She smacks him again. He swats her away. “You already knew it, laserbrain. I’ve told you.”  
  
“Uhm _no?”_ She stresses. “No you have _not!”_

“Rey,” Luke clears his throat. “Chances are, you’ve also been connected since that time. It just got stronger after the kidnapping, when you opened the channel further. Neither of you have really used the force since that time, nine years ago, right?”  
  
Rey nods. Ben just keeps chopping.  
  
Luke sighs. “It can be...dangerous, to cut oneself off from the force. When a force sensitive--particularly a couple of force sensitives as strong as yourselves--doesn’t tap into that reservoir of power, it can be…” He pauses for a while, which makes the already-tense Rey and Ben twitch. _This family, I swear to R’iia,_ Rey thinks _. Natural flair for untimely dramatics_. “Well, it can be explosive in times of emotional upheaval. Have either of you- noticed any changes in your physical strength? In your awareness of the things or people around you?”  
  
“Uh...not really. It’s only been a few days, and Ben and I haven’t really left the house.” Rey considers. “The only difference is the connection. It’s getting louder. Like Ben and I are sort of...like we’re one person? But in two bodies….”

It’s impossible to describe and Rey is starting to regret even trying. Ben is so uncomfortable she can feel the cold weight of it in her own stomach.  
  
Luke breathes out a long, slow breath. “I think I know what this is,” he finally says.  
  
The sound of Ben’s knife striking the wood cutting board stops. The silence is eerie.  
  
“You two have a force bond.”  
  
Ben is rigid. Rey just stares. “What’s that mean?”

Luke opens his mouth to answer- just as a loud clatter of dishes sounds from the sink—Ben’s dropped the knife and cutting board into it in a hasty clamour. He grunts something Rey can’t make out and leaves the kitchen.

She knew Ben didn’t want to talk about their connection--er, “force bond”--but she hadn’t realized just _how much_ he didn’t want to talk about it. Rey has silently worried, since the start of it all, if Ben secretly hates the bond. If he finds it annoying or tedious...burdensome. She’d understand if he did. Being in a fifteen-year-old girl’s head is probably pretty kriffing uncomfortable for a twenty-five-year-old man. It’s been eating at Rey since that first morning—since they’d woken up choking on each other’s nightmares.

Half of her loves the connection. Loves feeling him, in such a warm, visceral way—like he’s actually a _part_ of her. Like he’s never out of her reach, even from another room. Which is ridiculous, but Rey can’t seem to help it.

The other half sort of wishes the connection wasn’t there at all. That she and Ben could go back to normal, and she’d never called out to him through the force in the first place. That she didn’t have to make Ben so uncomfortable. Because _that’s_ what’s really the worst.

She watches Ben’s retreating figure before returning to her chair beside Luke. “Sorry,” she says on his behalf.

Luke lifts a hand, “don’t be. Ben has always been a private young man.”

She looks over to Luke with thinly veiled anxiety and a gnawing curiosity. “What _is_ a ‘force bond’?”

His sky blue eyes meet hers. “It’s rare, Rey. Very, very rare,” he says. “I’ve only heard stories—tales of masters and their padawans, minds bridged. It’s ancient force magic. Used between warriors in combat, or students and their teachers, or…” Luke pauses for what feels like _decades_. “-Or between life mates.”

Rey’s cheeks grow pink. “Like...a force marriage?” (Secretly, she thinks that sounds pretty kriffing romantic.)

Luke smiles. “I suppose.”

Rey stares at his beard with an empty gaze as she sorts through the information. “But Ben and I aren’t ‘master and padawan’,” she says. “We aren’t force-married. Was it just the stress of the kidnapping, you think? The force mistaking it for ‘combat’?”

Luke is watching her with keen eyes, the sky blue seeming to darken--almost oceanic. “I...suppose,” he says again. “You two have grown up together, after all. Two sensitives like yourselves, so bright and strong with the force—it would make sense if a bond was formed. Especially if it’s the only channel through which either of you is actually using the force.”

Rey’s eyes meet Luke’s again. “Is it like a balance thing? To make up for all the time we’ve...suppressed the force? ” Her brows draw tight as she thinks. “Maybe that caused the bond?”

Luke is staring out into the living room, at the hallway from which his nephew’s restless rummaging can be heard. “Perhaps,” he says, quietly. “Though it’s difficult to say. Each bond is unique. I’m admittedly not well-studied in the area,” he chuckles.

Rey hums. Chews on the inside of her cheek, like Ben sometimes does.

“There’s no reason to be anxious, young one,” Luke soothes, and suddenly his eyes are sky-blue again; crinkling with his bearded smile. “A force bond is a precious thing.”

Rey looks down at her cold cup of tea. There’s a comfortable silence that lingers between them before Luke breaks it softly.

“Rey, have you given any more thought to my offer, from all those years ago? To come to Yavin?”

“...Sometimes,” Rey admits. “I’ve always wanted to visit, at the very least.”

“And the training? Any interest in pursuing enlightenment in the force?”

Rey peers up at Luke, feeling torn. “I’m- I’ve always been a little...wary of the force stuff. Not because of Ben,” she hurries to explain. “-But because it’s always seemed so- big. Like a lot of responsibility. And it sounds like it’s a lot of power...and I don’t- I’m not interested in that.”

She pauses, and Luke prompts her with a gentle, “but…?”

“But...I’ve always been curious. And while I don’t want this bond between Ben and I to turn ‘explosive’, like you said, I don’t think-” she swallows, hoping Ben can’t hear her as she admits, “I don’t think I want to break it, either….At least, not yet. Not until I know what Ben wants to do about it.”

“You’re curious, and you want to learn control.”

Rey searches his face with trepidation written all over hers. For some reason she can’t understand, she feels guilty to respond, “Yes.”

 

 

x

 

 

**POV Switch—Ben**

It’s late. His mother and uncle are playing catch-up in the living room, and Ben is leaning against the foot of Rey’s bed, where she’s perched with her legs criss-cross, playing with his hair.

She’s braiding a small section of it with eerie focus, unusually quiet.

He wishes he knew what to say. How to untangle the mess of thoughts in his head, if only for her sake. It’s difficult for Ben to muck through, himself; the jumble of anxiety from the last few days, and frustration with Luke’s over-dramatic diagnosis--fear of Rey’s...youth, and naivety, surrounding the subject. It’s- impossible to navigate.

“Ben-“  
  
The hesitance in her voice reels his focus back into the moment. “Yeah?”

“Do you- does the bond-…?” _Kriff,_ he wishes Rey didn’t sound so guilty. He can taste it on his own tongue and wants to eradicate it immediately. “Do you hate it?”

“No,” he soothes. (Though he thinks, in retrospect, things would probably be less messy if he _did_ hate the bond.) “Its just complicated.”

Rey remains quiet behind him.

Ben lets out a frustrated exhale. “I don’t hate ‘being in your head’ or whatever. You’re not-“ _Fuck_ , Ben hates this. He’s bad at expressing himself on a good day and worse when it matters. “You’re not annoying. Or- invasive or anything. I know when your ear’s stinging or when you’re feeling...happy, or anxious. But it’s not- it isn’t ‘ _burdensome_ ’, Rey. Like I’ve told you, I’ve always had that sixth sense, when it came to you.”

“Are you sure?” The tickle he’d felt in his scalp as she’d played with his hair pauses.

“Yes,” he says. “It’s just- crowded, is all. I’m- the last few days...it’s been difficult.” He knows he needs to lay it all out for her, so he works his jaw and tries his best to explain himself. “I’m still fuckin’ pissed that you were taken, Rey. I can’t- I don’t know how else to say it. It still makes me _murderously_ angry.” He tosses the piece of lint he’d been twisting in his hands with an irritated flick of his fingers. “And I blame this force shit for it. I know it’s- special. I appreciate it for...connecting us. For helping me find you. But being strong with the force is also- it’s a fucking _beacon_ for bad shit like this. It’s a beacon for trouble.”  
  
“I’m sor-”  
  
“You don’t have to apologize,” he interrupts, twisting his torso so he can look up at her. She still looks guilty, so he shifts enough that he can rest his elbow on her knee—a soothing anchor for them both as he tries to further explain. “I just- don’t want Luke getting it into your head that you have to be anything more than you already are. That you _have_ to use this power for a higher purpose—like your only choice in life is to be a force puppet, and your only career option is ‘Jedi’, because that’s kriffing stupid, and unfair, and you can be whatever the _fuck_ you want, Rey, force or no force.”

She’s watching him with intense focus, and Ben is glad, because he _needs_ her to understand.

“And this bond we have…” he swallows. “I don’t want you to think it’s some kind of- cage. Like you’re trapped by it. I don’t want you to think it means we can never be _us_ again—that it changes anything. It doesn’t.” He’s shaking his head just the tiniest bit as he stresses, “It’s not some sign of a greater, predestined life full of- ‘combat’ or whatever bullshit Luke told you Force bonds are for. It’s just- us, okay?”

Rey nods, a small smile blooming on her face. “Okay.”

Ben nods once with finality, works his jaw and purses his lips from the long-winded lecture, and turns his back to her again, so she can finish her braid. “Good.”

The soft tickle in his scalp returns, and a more comfortable silence falls between them. He can feel Rey’s smile on him, still, and it settles the anxious knot in Ben’s gut.

“Thanks, Ben.”

He grunts. “Just don’t go off floating rocks or squaring up against assholes with red lightsabers without telling me first.”

She laughs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m so sorry this took so long, and it’s only a transition chapter! I’m still trying to figure out exactly which of two ways I want to take this plot, so thank you for the kind words, kudos’ and patience <3 
> 
> P.s. anyone else feel this way about the force?? Anyone else feel like it’d be kind of a huge pain in the ass?????? Lol


	9. Chapter 9

Rey flinches awake, cheeks wet, breathing hard. She’d been back in the freezing dark...lightsaber at her throat and a gapped-tooth grin blurring in and out of her line of sight. She’s shivering, as if she were still on that metal slab, goosebumps prickling up her arms. The side of her neck and the shell of her ear tingle—like they should still be burning….

Her covers are already tossed aside and tangled up when she slips from her bed and out of her room, across the hall. 

The only light in his room is the light coming from the datapad in his hand. Still awake, then.

Her footsteps are heavy and slow as she slumps through the doorway. “I had another nightmare.”

Ben turns in his desk chair to face her. She knows he’s only slept a handful of standard hours himself, since everything happened. It shows in the dark half-moons beneath his eyes--the glassy sheen across dilated pupils. He looks more exhausted than Rey feels.

Still, he reaches an arm out for her, and she collapses sideways into his lap—her entire right side and right cheek pressed against his chest as he pulls her legs up and over the armrest. She knows she’s too big for this kind of thing. Too old. But Ben will always be bigger, always older. So as long as he’s letting her get away with it, she’ll take advantage.   
  
She lets herself unwind muscle by muscle, her cold, clammy skin flooding with happy goosebumps at the feel of Ben’s heat. Rey loves the way he smells. Like that Ithorian rosewood stuff Han brought back for him years and years ago--it’s clean and strong. A little sharp. Like Ben himself.

“You and Leia always smell so good….” Rey’s too tired to figure out if there’s anything else she wants—or needs—to say, but apparently that was about it.

Her head bobs as a soft huff comes from his chest. “You and Dad always smell like ion fuel.”

“In a good way?”

“In...a familiar way.”

She pokes his clavicle. _So, a good way._

He absently tickles one of her feet that’s dangling off his armrest and picks up his datapad again. Rey can clearly see him exiting out of the “covert” research he’s been doing and pulls up the holophotos he has saved on it. Rey turns her head to snoop, as Ben had likely anticipated she would.

She could’ve guessed as much, but it still makes Rey’s heart stutter to see so many photos of herself scattered between the rest. Most of them are candids she’s never seen before; of her holding up a ship model she’d finished, flipping a flatcake, laughing with Chewie, head bent over the garage workbench with Han, or smiling at Leia during a game of dejarik.   
  
But as he scrolls, she’s delighted to get a peek at all the other photos she hasn’t seen.   
  
There are a few of the Falcon, and a smattering of the ships Ben used to work on with Paige before his promotion. Rey recognizes a few miscellaneous pics as ones Ben, Paige or Sotna have sent her from the pad, or she’s sent him. There’s a string of close-ups of Paige and Rose’s faces they’d clearly taken themselves, which Rey reaches her hand out to tap at, snorting, before Ben closes them to continue scrolling. She even catches a few photos of Poe (usually with Rey in a headlock or making a face—likely also taken by Paige) here and there.  
  
Rey lets her head drop against his chest again. “I miss them….”   
  
Ben says nothing, but he doesn’t have to. The bond hums with an echoed sentiment.   
  
_You miss them, too_.

But Ben keeps scrolling, so Rey just lazily turns her head to continue watching his hands. He stops scrolling when he’s reached the top of the holophotos folder. Rey squints a little, not recognizing the vid files he’s stopped at. He taps the pad, and a holovid appears in Rey’s lap.   
  
It’s old. Rey can tell it wasn’t taken on this datapad. It’s a little grainy, and there’s the faintest hiss of static.   
  
But when it settles, Rey’s eyes widen.   
  
There’s Ben, younger even than when Rey’d met him, she’s certain--he looks maybe thirteen or fourteen.     
  
The first thing Rey notices is that holovid-Ben is sleepy and upset. His adolescent voice is squeaky and awkward as he addresses whoever’s behind the datapad, taking the vid. His eyes are so big--so round and bright. And he’s so lanky, and- “Your _hair_ ,” she whispers, marveling. “It’s so short-”   
  
In the holovid, Rey can hear Leia’s soft voice saying, _‘-was just a bad dream, sweetheart. Everything’s okay.’_ _  
_ _  
_ _‘-could feel it, Mom. They’re so sad….’_ _  
_ _  
_ “What did you dream about?” Rey asks softly, eyes still tracking this smaller Ben Solo with her wide eyes.   
  
“You.”   
  
Rey turns her head to watch as he presses his lips together and swallows.   
  
She can feel a weight of importance to his next words--as if he’d been saving them for some time. “Mom was in the middle of sending a holovid message to my dad when I called out for her. It was the day your parents left you on Jakku. I- had a nightmare.”   
  
Rey’s eyes stray helplessly back to the younger, distraught Ben. _‘-gone, they left…’_   
  
_‘Someone flew away…?’_ Leia asks, confusion in her voice.   
  
_‘Someone important- someone I don’t- I don’t want to leave-’_   
  
_‘Oh,_ honey _.’_ The camera drops--presumably to the floor, since the audio continues even as the image goes fuzzy and dark. _‘We’re always with you. I’m right here. I’m so sorry, Ben, sweetheart…'_ _  
_   
Rey hears a few stray sniffles, and the Ben she’s pressed against reaches over her lap, makes a pinching motion, and the holo disappears.   
  
Rey has to force herself to push aside her own memories of that day to ask what she wants to ask instead. “Did…we...” she trails off, still processing. “Did we have the bond that... that early?” She looks up at Ben, whose eyes are far away, staring down at his hand that’s fallen limply atop his desk, still holding the datapad. 

“Yes. I told you before--I could always feel you.”  
  
Why are you showing me this right now?  
  
He’s still looking down at the pad in his hands. “This force bond is strong,” he says. “It isn’t- breakable. It isn’t weakened by time, or...space.” His voice falls over the last word as if it were a cliff he hadn’t seen on the horizon.

...As if he hadn’t meant to fall over it in the first place.  
  
Rey searches his tired eyes.

Something’s wrong. Something is wrong, and Ben is struggling to keep something from her until _‘the right time’_ \--it’s the only thing she can hear through the connection; _‘wait until the right time, until the right time, until the right time....’_

“What aren’t you telling me?” She whispers.   
  
He doesn’t say. And he only barely meets her eyes when he sighs and lifts them both from the chair. He carries her back across the hall, lays her back in her bed and finally sasys, softly, “Go back to sleep.”   
  
Something is wrong. Something is _wrong_.   
  
It’s an alarm blaring in Rey’s head. But it isn’t one she can answer, not while she’s so exhausted from the nightmare. So she mutes it.   
  
For now.   


 

* * *

 **Ben’s POV—Next Day**

* * *

  


  


With Ben’s mother even more tight-lipped than usual, his father and Chewie taking increasingly frequent comms in the Falcon, and Luke hovering between, it’s obvious they’re already making plans. Without yet bringing Ben and Rey in the loop.    
  
It chafes, and Ben knows--to the marrow of his bones--that a confrontation is coming. But for now, he’s too preoccupied.     
  
It’s been five days since he and Rey have left Canthem House. Which is fine with Ben. He has his girl to watch over. Research on the Dark Force Mob to do. 

A resignation letter to write.

Unfortunately for these plans (and his sanity), Rey has never handled being cooped up very well.   
  
This morning, she slides up to him with a request that’s slyly accompanied by a steaming mug of caf and round, pleading eyes.   
  
He accepts the caf and takes a gratifying sip before staring down at her and pursing his lips. “No.”  
  
All of the hopeful tension in her body collapses. “Ben, come _on…”_   
  
“Hmm.”

“ _Please?_ ”

“...Okay.”   
  
“Really?”   
  
“No.”   
  
Rey groans with all the dramatic gusto only a fifteen-year-old can muster and follows him into Leia’s office. It’s where Ben has set up his makeshift workspace while he’s at Canthem House with Rey. The huge transpariglass window doubles as a holonet vidscreen--Ben’s account waiting to be logged into. He takes a seat behind the desk and another swig of caf as he tries to stealthily keep Rey from seeing what he’s been up to.

Rey faces him from the other side, steely-eyed. “It’ll be out in the open. There’ll be a crowd, and tents, and lots of-” she pauses to find the right word and then makes a rainbow motion with her arms, “-Coverage.”   
  
“No.”   
  
“ _Ben_ ,” she pleads, “I need to see them. You do, too, you just don’t want to admit it.”   
  
“So invite them here-”   
  
“They’re already waiting for us at the market! And we _have_ to get out of this house.”   
  
“Not yet we don’t.”   
  
“We _do!_ ” Rey insists, her voice growing angry.   
  
It makes Ben sit back in his seat, eyes finally meeting hers. “You’re still healing, Rey. Your neck and ear-”   
  
“The bacta is doing it’s job! My ear is almost whole again-”   
  
Ben makes an angry sound in the back of his throat. No matter how amazing bacta is at restoring flesh and replenishing cells...it should never have been necessary. Rey’s ear shouldn’t have a massive _tear_ in it in the _first place_ \-   
  
“You’re driving me _crazy!”_ Rey shouts. Ben’s attention snaps sideways from her ear to her blazing gaze. “You, Luke, Leia, Han-” she blusters, throwing her arms up. “You’re all keeping secrets and pushing each other away and burying your heads in a ridiculous heap of illegally obtained datafiles on a group that’s about as traceable as a _conspiracy theory,_ all while completely ignoring the fact that it’s probably exactly what those Crescent bantha turds _want_ you to do! Fall further down the hole! Drift apart!”   
  
At his look of mild shock, Rey just snorts unhappily.   
  
“Thought I didn’t know?” Her eyes narrow, jaw tight as she marches over to the transpariglass vidscreen and swipes out of his account, tapping rapidly at the touch-controls to pull up her own.   
  
The pit of his stomach falls through the floor.     
  
Rey proceeds to pull up not just Ben’s datatrail on the Red Crescent, but Leia and Han’s, too. Lists of names, persons of interest, ship logs, more names, locations, docking coordinates, entire _systems_ of interest. Leia’s holomail is opened at the top left of the screen. Han and Chewie’s comm-logs are pulled up at the top right. Ben even recognizes a string of direct messages between Rey and the infamous _Maz Kanata_.

She turns from the screen to face him, the look on her face so fierce Ben swallows. “I’ve had Canthem House wired since I was _eight_ , Ben.”  
  
His discomfort rises several degrees. It’s rare that he forgets how smart Rey is—how resourceful. But it’s rarer that her scrappy genius sets his own ass on fire.  
  
“None of you are sleeping,” she continues. “Leia and Luke are here even less than they usually are. Han’s practically barricaded himself in the Falcon. Even _Chewie_ won’t look me in the eyes for longer than he has to.” He can feel the twist of longing in her gut. “...And it’s not just them.”   
  
“Rey, you know why we-”  
  
“Of course I do,” she interrupts, swiping at the vidscreen so it all disappears--so that she can see out of the window; the one that overlooks the landing pad. She stares at the Millennium Falcon like she can’t actually see it. “It’s just…” Her eyes find his again before, all at once, Rey just- deflates. Like she’d had everything to say and no words to say it all with. She sighs. The sound reminds Ben of his mother. She turns back to the window. “I just want to see my friends. I want you to get the kriff out of this office and come _with_ me. You said this force stuff wouldn’t be a ‘cage’. You said this wouldn’t change anything, but it already is.”   
  
Ben works his jaw as his own words echo through the bond.   
  
He can feel her coming toward his seat. Feels the high back of the chair behind his neck squish a little, under her weight. She’s resting her arms--chin atop them--just to the right of his head. He feels her head tilt to bump his ear. “They’re your friends, too, you know,” she says, softly. “It’s not just me they wanna see....”   
  
Ben looks at the datapads strewn in front of him. The rabbit hole he and his family have all fallen down in order to protect the one person they can’t seem to stop _hurting_. Neglect is a familiar ache, and Ben doesn’t want it to sink it’s fangs any deeper in Rey.  

He lets out a long breath. There’s a myriad of reasons to stand by his ‘no’. But Rey has always been good at skipping around his resolutions. “...Fine.”   
  
He feels his chair bounce a little as Rey’s head whips up. “Really?”   
  
“But we’re taking backup.”   
  
He can feel Rey’s eyes on the back of his head. “‘Backup’?”   
  
“Uncle Chewie.”   
  
He can hear Rey’s internal groan, _R’hiia, you are_ so _paranoid._ But she keeps her mouth shut, instead opting to wrap her arms around his neck from behind and kiss his cheek, which he pretends to grumble over.

“Take a sonic shower first,” he adds. “You smell.”   
  
She flicks his ear before rushing out to change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to apologize again for how long this update took! Everything's going in a very, VERY different direction than I'd originally planned. A better direction, I promise! Just- one that's taking me more time to sort of plan out. I'm also sorry that you've had to wait so long for an update that's only 2000 words BUT this is mostly just a transition chap to set the next few (longer, I swear) chaps in motion! THANKS FOR ALL YOUR WONDERFUL COMMENTS AND ENCOURAGEMENT TO CONTINUE--I SWEAR IT WORKS AND I SWEAR THIS FIC IS NOT ABANDONED BY ANY MEANS. I'M JUST ESPECIALLY TALENTED AT OVERTHINKING EVERY PARAGRAPH. LUH U.


	10. Chapter 10

And so Ben is literally dragged by his shirtsleeve to the marketplace, where apparently the Tico sisters are already waiting.

He’s so itchy and tense on the hoverrail over that he growls when someone drops their comm on the car floor. Chewie agreed to act as backup from above in one of Leia’s designated senatorial stealth vessels, but it’s a single-seater defense craft, so they couldn’t catch a ride. As far as Ben’s concerned, those Red Crescent fuckers could be anywhere, ready to descend on Rey at any given moment--even on the fuckin’ hoverrail. Every muscle in his body is tensed for a fight.

Rey takes his hand and squeezes it. It soothes him for a moment, until frustration creeps up behind it. _Always the first to comfort,_ he thinks. _Never the first to be comforted._ She’s the one with the fucking _bandages_. He should be better at this by now.

“We couldn’t stay cooped up forever,” she says.

He clenches his jaw and thinks pointedly (childishly) _sure we could’ve_. She gives him an exasperated smile as they near their stop. “Just stay close,” he insists aloud.

Luckily, Rey was right—the crowd is significant, and there’s plenty of coverage. The entire length of the street is canopied beneath tents, flags, and patterned cloth. He mentally maps out a few visible exits from their vantage point above it, where the hoverrail stop sits, as Rey scans the crowd for her friends.  

The Ticos are waving at them from the market entrance. Rey darts across the rail stop and down the stairwell, making a beeline for the sisters.

“What did I _just_ say,” he grumbles.

When he reaches them, Rey is at the center of a Tico Sister Sandwich. Paige is running a hand up and down Rey’s back as Rose touches the bacta patch still wrapped around the shell of Rey’s ear--her usually cheery face pinched tight with outrage on her friend’s behalf. But Rey is smiling, already chattering about the rare speeder parts she’s hoping to thrift today.

“Hey, Benny Boy,” Paige hip-checks him as Rey and Rose bend their heads together over a holomap of the market. “Been a while.”

“We live together,” he sighs, putting on his default exasperation for her amusement. “I saw you last week.”

“That’s a _whole week_ without my favorite couch-slouch!” She cries. The corner of Ben’s mouth twitches.  

Rey and Rose gesture for them to hurry up, so he and Paige follow at a purposefully slow pace, just to piss them off. He keeps a close eye on Rey as they walk.

“So I’m still lookin’ for a place with Sotna,” Paige says idly.

Ben scans the balconies lining the high, narrow street for anything suspicious. “Yeah?”

Paige buys herself some food on a stick and waves it dismissively in the air. “Even though I’m pretty sure Sotna’s already found a place. She’s just putting off the bureaucratic mess of leasing her studio.”

Ben happens to know that Sotna sorted that “mess” out months ago (she'd _literally_ grabbed him by the ear, hauling him to the caf shop across the street from their office just to bitch about it), but he remains silent, glancing down at his roommate.

“And-“ Paige starts, chewing on her food and watching Rey and Rose try on a couple of vibrant Endorian head-scarves. “I don’t know. Is it silly that I don't feel ready to let go of our place? I mean shit- you and I could both afford bigger places on the salaries we have now. And we don’t even get to see much of each other, anyway. It would make sense for me to leave the place to you….”

Ben vaguely remembers having a similar conversation with Paige a few months back, when she and Sotna had first mentioned finding a place together.  
  
He abruptly feels heavier. A guilty lump expands in the pit of his stomach as he realizes he still hasn’t sorted out how to tell Paige and Sotna about his- plan. He feels...foolish for not considering them sooner.

“I just really like our setup,” Paige continues, shrugging. “Rose likes it, too. And I _know_ Rey likes it. Those two are practically our third and fourth roommates, let’s be honest,” she snorts. Ben has to agree—he’s come home late at night to find Rey and Rose on their floor in a snoring heap of starfished limbs more times than he can count. “It’s comfortable, y’know? I’ll miss that.” Paige tosses the stick over her shoulder and shoves her hands in her mechanic's jumpsuit pockets.

Ben hums, because he does know. It just took him until _this moment_ to realize.  

“What about you? Aren’t you tired of the roommate life? Hell, Ben, you could probably afford any place you want, with your fancy-ass position in the senate. Lord knows Sotna’s moved around now that she’s a big-shot analyst.”

They watch Rose feed Rey some weird, black fruit that turns her nose blue. The girls laugh, shoulder-to-shoulder like Ben and Paige are. He glances down at his roommate again. He’s been so busy with Rey--with this Red Crescent shit, and the subsequent plan-making--that he hadn’t stopped to realize that he _will_ miss Paige Tico.  
  
He’ll miss their place. Though he gripes, he likes when Rey and Rose spread out their homework all over the living room floor. He likes when Paige has late-night leftovers in the cryofridge labeled “for my big growing Benny Boy.” He likes the faint smell of Sotna’s lavender candles, and Rose’s holovids playing softly in the background, and the dent in the hall wall where Rey jammed her elbow, wrestling Poe for the holoremote.

He never thinks about this kind of shit until it’s too late.

“I don’t know,” he finally answers. He does. He just doesn’t know how the fuck to bring it up out of the blue. He has no idea when the time will be, just knows it isn’t right now. _Rey needs today to be perfect._  And if he were being honest, he doesn't want to spoil the day for the Ticos, either. He feels...protective of their good mood.   
  
He and Paige follow the girls into a tent full of antiques, scanning the shelves with little legitimate interest.

“I don’t blame you for being distracted,” Paige elbows him. “That’s not what this is about.”

“I know.”

“...Ben,” she rests a hand on his back as they pause a short distance from the girls, and offers him a rare, somber look. “I’m so sorry about what happened. Rey’s comm message scared the kriff out of us. Sotna, too. I know she’s been blowing up your link.”

Ben huffs. “She has."

“How are _you_ doing?”   
  
...Ben doesn’t want to answer honestly. If he were to answer honestly he’d have to talk about the nightmares. The paranoia. He’d have to detail his newfound obsession with keeping Rey as close and as safe as fucking possible—how much time he spends preparing for the next attack, and the amount of hours he’s already wasted researching something as intangible as a ‘conspiracy theory’, as Rey'd put it.

If Ben were to answer honestly, he’d likely just- shout and break things for hours and hours on end until the frustration bled him dry.

“I’m fine,” he settles on.  
  
She snorts, “fuckin’ liar,” but lets it drop anyway, thank kriff. Paige has always been a reliable confidant for that very reason--unlike everyone else in his life, she always lets Ben get away with lying if it's for his own good. “And Leia? Han?” She continues.  
  
“Mother comms Rey about every 5 seconds, but returned to work this morning with Luke in tow. Han…” he hesitates, unsure himself what his father is plotting. “I can’t tell. He doesn’t hover, but- he’s not running off-planet anytime soon, either.” _I’ll know for sure as soon as I tap into Rey’s servor tonight,_ he keeps to himself.  
  
“That’s good.”

Ben’s brows tug together. “I guess.”

“And...Rey?” Ben huffs. “Shut up, you know she’d hate if I asked _her_ , so I gotta ask the next-best.”

Ben snatches up the antique Paige’d been toying with, just for something to do. Paige punches him in the arm, so he hands it back. “She’s handling it the best of us all. Annoyingly.”

His roommate snorts.

Ben doesn’t know what compels him to say it. Maybe it’s just Paige herself—the sister Rey’d always wanted, and the confidant Ben never knew he needed. Or if he’s just bottled up so much tension and anxiety that he knows he’ll implode if he doesn’t. Either way, he keeps talking. “But she’s scared of the possibility of having to go into hiding,” he sighs. ”Of being left alone or sent away because of everything.”

“I bet. Not the type to throw a fit to get her own way, though, that one. She'd understand if it’s for her own safety.”

Ben’s eye twitches. “She would.” _Though she could stand to throw a fit or two every once in a while_. It's what got them out here, today, after all--though Ben's certain she'd never have spoken up the way she did today if it were Leia or Han. His eyes find her across the tent--Rose laughing at an ancient gas mask that Rey’s donned; hands clawed as she looms, growling, over her shorter friend. “But it’s still- it’s bullshit. Isolating her was also my first instinct-" Paige shoots him a glare over her shoulder that Ben ignores. “But- she’s safest where her family and friends are.” The look on Rey’s face as Rose takes her hand is testament enough. She lights up like her friend is the cure to some unseen illness Rey’d contracted. “She’s safe under my mother’s protection—”  
  
“-who could press a button and summon a fleet of guards if she needed to,” Paige fills in.  
  
Ben nods. “Exactly. Rey...doesn’t belong in hiding.” _She’d lose her_ _mind_.

“That’s true,” Paige agrees. She falls silent for a while as they continue to wander.  
  
Ben clenches and unclenches his jaw. It could be the perfect opportunity to bring her in on what Ben plans to do—what he’s already decided he _has_ to do.

But he knows he has to tell Rey, first. Or she’d kill him. So Ben just exhales long and slow as they continue their puttering a few yards behind Rey and Rose.

Luckily, Paige changes the subject before Ben can stumble his way through a non-sequitur. “Well anyway, take your time about the apartment shit. No pressure.” Ben feels the stone in his gut grow a few sizes bigger. “And hey-” she grins, “if I move out with Sotna it could encourage Rose and Rey to try moving in together! They’re old enough that a change of scenery would probably be a good thing, y’know?”  
  
That shocks Ben into looking sharply at her. But Paige’s eyes are on the girls with that gooey older-sister gaze of hers.  
  
He hadn’t even thought about Rey moving out.  
  
He hadn’t even thought about _thinking_ about Rey moving out.  
  
The mere idea- after _everything-_

“She’s only fifteen,” is all that falls out of his stupid ass mouth.  
  
Paige just takes another hefty chomp out of more skewered food she’s procured without Ben realizing. Ben’s still shocked stupid by the idea of Rey living anywhere but Canthem House--the ultimate Safe Place--as they meander out after Rey and Rose, who have paused at the mouth of an alley by the antique tent to take another look at the market map. “Rose basically moved in with us when she was like, _twelve_ , remember? And Rey is _way_ more prepared for the independent lifestyle than Rose will ever be,” she laughs.    
  
Ben’s stomach roils-  
  
They hear Rose shriek.  
  
All Ben sees is a dark figure looming behind the girls in the alley before he’s moving. His vision goes red as he watches Rey elbow the figure in the stomach. Ben vaults himself forward, grips the doubled-over attacker’s shoulders, and _throws_ them onto the street pavement. His pulse is racing and his foot is about a second away from driving down into the man’s _skull_ when-  
  
A familiar groan. Jawline, curly hair, five o’clock shadow.  
  
The fight leaves Ben in a gusty huff, his hands still trembling with panicked adrenaline as he curses.  
  
“You scared the _shit_ out of us, Poe!” Rey shouts.  
  
When all he does is cough in reply, Rey apologizes, stooping to help him up.   
  
Ben is far less apologetic. “Dameron, you _fucking_ moof milker,” he says, breathless. “I could kill you.”  
  
“Sorry,” the fucker groans. “That was-” Paige is already suppressing giggles as Ben and Rey help the idiot to his feet. He winces, and Rey apologizes again. “-That was in poor taste, given the uh-” He wipes at his mouth, as if expecting to see blood. There is none, much to Ben’s disappointment. Poe turns big, sheepish brown eyes on Ben. “-Given recent events. My bad.” When he’s steady on his feet, Ben already wants to shove him again. He’s just glad Rey landed a solid blow to the asshole’s solar plexus.  
  
Dameron turns his puppy eyes on Rey as she snakes an arm around the middle of his back with more apologies at the tip of her tongue. Dameron interrupts her with a wave of his hand and a kiss to her temple. “It’s my bad. Really. Just wanted to surprise you.”  
  
“Mission accomplished,” Ben grunts. Paige laughs. Likely realizing Ben isn't about to, Rose closes in on Poe’s other side to help heft him out of the alley.   
  
Dameron flips Ben the bird and rests his arms on the girls' shoulders. The group makes its way back onto the main street. “Sotna messaged,” Dameron explains. “Said Rey and Benny were finally leaving the house. Had to see how you were.”  
  
“Comm broken?”  
  
Paige elbows Ben in his ribs. His glare doesn’t budge.  
  
Rey’s hand smooths up and down Dameron’s back, like he’s a sickly patient or some shit. Ben rolls his eyes as everyone plays catch-up with the pilot. They find a table in front of one of the food vendors; the girls depositing Poe before heading off to find drinks.  
  
When they’ve seated themselves, Ben smacks Dameron at the back of his head.  
  
“ _Oww?!_ I said I’m _sorry-_ ”  
  
“Don’t ever pull that shit again.”  
  
One of Dameron's hands is rubbing the back of his bruised head as the other rises in surrender. “You got it, you got it….” He glances over his shoulder at the girls before his eyes settle back on Ben. “I just had to see her for myself. Make sure she’s- you know-” he swallows. “In one piece. Been worried, is all.”  
  
Ben grunts. Paige shakes her head with a smile.  
  
“Look, pal, I was worried about your dumb ass, too,” Dameron says, poking Ben’s shoulder. Ben only lets it slide because he knows the asshole’s head is already killing him. _Good_.  
  
“Right,” Ben sniffs.

“I mean it!”  
  
The girls settle back into the bench opposite them.  
  
Dameron steals a fern fry from Rose and insists, “I’ve been waiting to hear from _both_ of you guys for days.”  
  
Rey’s hazel gaze lifts from her own fries. “I almost left a message on your datapad,” she starts in apology. “But Leia mentioned a training exercise, so I thought you were busy…” she trails off. “I’m sorry, Poe.”  
  
Ben surreptitiously checks his wristcomm to triple-check Chewbacca’s position above. He’s hovering in atmo exactly on top of them. Ben sends a quick message--‘thanks Chew’--before raising his eyes just enough to glare at Rey for apologizing excessively. “Stop saying sorry.”  
  
She chucks a fry at him, definitely having noticed Ben checking his wristcomm. “Stop bugging Chewie.”  
  
Poe and the Tico sisters snap their heads up in synchronized interest. “Chewie’s here?” Ben’s never understood their obsession with his fuzzy uncle.  
  
Rey’s mouth is full but she nods. Takes a loud gulp as she swallows. “As ‘backup’,” she air-quotes. Her mouth is still half-full as she rolls her eyes, gesturing at Ben.  
  
“Ah, good call,” Poe nods, as if in on it, the idiot. Rey kicks his shin beneath the table at the same time as Ben elbows him in his ribs. “AGH!” Poe yelps. “Stop _hurting_ me!” The Ticos titter. " _Anyway_ , glad to see you're both _fighting fit_."   
  
Rey smiles. Ben'd sooner be cryogenically frozen and dipped in a rancor pit, but- he has to admit he's...impressed. That Dameron cared enough about them to blow off a training exercise--Poe's never skipped a training exercise in his life.   
  
"As you can see, we're in one piece. Idiot." 

 

x

  
  
  
Sotna arrives shortly after they finish eating, much to her dismay. Paige cozies right up to her girlfriend with offered leftovers and shmoopy, half-assed apologies for ‘not waiting’. Poe and Ben snort. Paige _never_ waits to eat.    
  
Poe and the sisters are distracted by a particularly insistent street peddler when Sotna pulls Rey into a rare hug. Sotna is especially private about displays of affection. The kidnapping must've shaken her more than she'd let on if she's hugging Rey in the first place.  
  
“You’re a sturdy one,” is all she says when they pull apart.  
  
Rey is staring up at the twi’lek like she hung the fuckin’ moons. She’s always looked up to Sotna. This kind of interaction is likely a fantasy come to life. All Rey can do is nod vigorously. “I’m okay!”  
  
"I am glad."  
  
Rose snags Rey’s hand before Rey can explode into ecstatic butterflies. “C’mon, Rey, I think I know where to find that coupler you’re looking for!”   
  
Ben can’t help the tiny smile tugging at his mouth at the look on her face. Rey is radiating pure joy as Rose hauls her away, Poe hollering at them to "wait for me!" as he hustles to pay the peddler for the trinket he’d likely been duped into buying.  
  
And Ben-  
  
“She looks like she’ll be okay,” Sotna says. When he looks over to see the small, affectionate smiles aimed his way from Sotna and Paige….  
  
Though he’d never say it, Rey was right.  
  
He’d missed his friends. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I'm not ENTIRELY sure this is all I wanted to write for this chapter, since I'm super fond of writing this friend group, but I'm leaving it here for now because I've been editing it for literal weeks and can't stand to touch it again for a while lol. I'll let you know in the future if I've gone back and added to this chapter just for funsies! (Because if I did add to this chapter I can promise you, it won't be to move the plot forward but to have fun with this unconventional friend group lol)


	11. Chapter 11

The orange light of the setting sun bounces off the surrounding, soaring glass buildings, filling their favorite shabby diner in the heart of the city with a warm glow.

It’s the first time Rey hasn’t descended on the diner food like a starving rancor. Instead, she sits staring solemnly down at it as if the plate is empty.  
  
She’s clenching her jaw to keep her chin from wobbling. Blinking hard to keep her eyes dry and clenching her fists in her lap beneath the table, where Leia can’t see them, to keep from hiding her face.

“Rey, I know you don’t want to-“

“I do if it’s the right thing.”

She feels Leia’s hand beneath the table, resting atop one of Rey’s fists. She looks up at her guardian and tries not to break, determined to look strong.

“I know it sucks,” Leia says. “If Luke hadn’t been so thorough- so sure…hell, what am I saying,” Leia shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter how thorough he is, I _still_ don’t want to send you to Yavin. I hope you understand that it’s a last resort decision reached solely for your safety. At least until we know more about the Red Crescent. And how much _they_ know.”  
  
Rey swallows. “I’ll be with Luke, right? At school?”  
  
Leia hesitates. “...Sometimes. You’ll...mostly be with Master Tano. An old and trusted family-friend.” There’s a hint of a smile in Leia’s voice when she adds, “I promise you’ll like her.”  
  
Rey bites down on the strong impulse to snap at that. Something like, ‘ _what does it matter if I_ like _her? I barely know Luke and even_ he _won’t be there.’_ ’ It’s difficult to resist, because she’s angry that the adults have already made this decision. Without her. Without giving her a choice. She’s angry that she feels four and alone--powerless and small, all over again.  
  
But she reminds herself that this isn’t the same. That there’s a difference between being abandoned somewhere and being _sent_ somewhere, for her own safety. She _knows_ Leia. She knows Han and Ben.  
  
She doesn’t...think….  
  
No, _no_. They would never abandon her.

Though...nothing can silence that tiny, feral Scavenger inside who would rather fight to stay with her family—screaming at the sky until her throat is raw—than take any of this sitting quietly. Nothing can keep that part of her from wondering if she’s done something wrong. Something that is, once again, driving the people she loves away.  
  
Still, she bites her tongue, because Rey refuses to bring Leia any more trouble or pain than she already has. Because she knows Leia is hurting, too. Rey’s sure that if she reached for her thoughts across the force, she’d find the same self-feeding circuit that Ben so often seems to foster lately; regret, and a fierce drive to protect.  
  
Rey decides there’s nothing more important, now, than easing Leia’s mind as much as possible. Watching her guardian, who is sat across the booth table like it’s a guillotine and Rey is the executioner...something sparks in Rey. It lights up her insides until everything else vanishes; the anger, the pain, the fear. The feeling grows until it bursts.  
  
“I love you, Leia.”  
  
Leia’s eyes close as if welcoming a warm gust of wind on her face.  
  
She’s always been a master at keeping her emotions in check (Rey certainly hadn’t learned how to remain collected in stressful situations by watching Han or Ben _)_ but for once, it’s all there in her face.  
  
When she opens them, her smile is as wobbly as Rey’s bottom lip. A few warm, peaceful minutes pass before she speaks, reaching for Rey’s hands atop the table. “I was so sure you’d hate us for this. Hate _me_ ,” she stresses. “And I wouldn’t fault you for it.”  
  
Rey leans forward, squeezing Leia’s hands. “ _Never_ , y’oja _."_ The word slips out so naturally in the moment, but Rey still turns a little pink, realizing what she’s said. She hopes Leia doesn’t notice.

Leia sniffs a watery laugh, squeezing Rey’s hands back. “You’ve called me that once before, when you were little, and I’ve always been too afraid to ask...what does that word mean? ‘ _Y’oja_ ’.”

Rey swallows, fidgeting in her seat as more heat floods her cheeks. She hadn’t thought Leia remembered the last time it’d slipped out.  
  
“It isn’t galactic slang for ‘bantha’s ass’ or ‘rancor spit’, is it?” Leia inserts, amused. “Han and I have a handful of those in our pockets, too.”  
  
“No! No, of _course_ not!” She rushes to correct, horrified that Leia might’ve thought that, and for so long. “It’s trade language for-” still, it’s awkward to get out, and Rey worries how Leia will react. Her face feels hot as she quietly admits, “It means ‘mother’ in- in squib.”  
  
There’s a short silence between them that feels like a fist to Rey’s gut. She’s about to apologize for making everything weird when Leia’s smile softens impossibly further.  
  
Rey is so relieved to see the look on her face that she slowly smiles, too.

And then, food be damned, Leia reaches for Rey across the table for an awkward hug. It’s a tight, uncomfortable squeezing of shoulders—the two of them only half-standing from the booth seats—and it feels _so_ good.

“I should’ve asked sooner,” Leia says as they part, eyes sparkling. “I want you to know something, sweetheart,” she says. “I have considered you family since the day Han comm’d me from Jakku.”

Rey’s eyes and nose sting.

“You should’ve heard him,” Leia smiles. “He told me, ‘ _Leia, I swear, this kid could be ours.’_ I think he loved you first. Ben and I just sort of tripped over him to fall for you next.” She chuckles wetly. “I love you, too, Rey. My girl. My scavenger.”  

Rey breaks. Tears sting her eyes. She scuttles out of her booth seat to cram into Leia’s, clutching her from the side. It’s such a beautiful thing to hear--the word ‘love’ so sparsely used in the Organa-Solo house. “I really don’t want to go,” she chokes quietly. “I don’t want to leave you.”  
  
Leia grips her tight. “And I don’t want you to leave.” It’s the first time Rey’s ever heard the woman speak through tears, voice unfamiliar; rough and broken.  
  
After Leia’s paid the bill and thanked the chef, she takes Rey’s hand, and they walk slowly to the hovertrain station. The silence hurts, their hearts heavy with the impending goodbye, but Rey wants to cherish Leia’s confession. Wants to color their conversation--this memory--bright as the sunset; orange and pink with love and fondness. Not the falling dark of night they make their way home in; a  bitter, black-blue sadness.  
  
When they reach home and Rey tucks in for the night, It’s difficult. It’s very, very difficult. The bitter, black-blue sadness remains when she closes her eyes, and swallows her in sleep.

 

  
x

 

“What the _fuck_ makes you think sending her away is the solution?!”

“Ben, this is for her safety-“

“No, it’s for _your_ _convenience!_ How do you think she’ll feel being pawned off and abandoned on another _goddamned_ planet?! _ALONE!”_  
  
It’s late at night, and Rey’s supposed to be asleep. But she’d felt Ben. He’s angry, _fuming,_ and in pain. So Rey'd startled out of bed to make sure he was okay, when she caught rising voices spilling from the garage.

There’s only a small slit in the door, but it’s enough to see everyone. Guilt settles quickly as she takes in the tense circle of adults, sensing she’s at the heart of the argument.

Luke and Han are watching warily as mother and son go head to head in the center of the garage.

“She wouldn’t be alone,” Leia insists. “She’d be in _school_ , Ben, with others like her. With Luke-”

“ _SHE BARELY KNOWS LUKE!”_ Ben erupts. Rey winces at the sheer force of his vitriol—Leia doesn’t flinch. “You’re sending her away to live with a man she barely knows, learning to control something so dangerous it’s what got her kidnapped _in the first place,”_ he seethes. “And pretending that you and dad will ‘visit her often’ is a _shit_ promise, you _know_ it is. You two barely visit your own home- barely visit your own _son!”_

Ben’s lips mash and his jaw clenches as soon as the words tumble out.

Han is watching his son with a familiar look of regret in his eyes. Leia looks...distressed, and tired. Frustrated. Rey wants to comfort her. Wants to comfort _everyone_ , but doesn't know how. “She’s doing this of her own choice. You can ask her-“

“She's doing what she thinks _you_ want her to do because that’s what Rey _fucking_ _does_ —she keeps the damn peace even if it means _snapping herself in half_ to make things easier for you and Dad!” Ben is looking at Leia with such pent-up fury in his eyes that Rey can feel it blazing uncomfortably in her own tensed muscles. A few beats pass before Ben quiets his voice, though the effect isn’t any less threatening. “Rey needs to stay here. She can move into my apartment, if that’s what it takes-“

“Ben, you’re already being swallowed whole by the Holopress for your decision to leave the senate—”  
  
_What? ...Ben quit?_ Rey didn’t know that.  
  
“--It would be careless to drag Rey into that mess-”

“‘ _Careless_ ’?!” Ben bellows. “No, no-“ he hurries, looking frantic and _spitting_ mad. “-What’s _careless_ is making her feel unwanted! What’s _careless_ is making her feel like she’s a _fucking burden!_ ”  
  
Rey is crying. She hates this. She hates that she can feel everything he's feeling. Hates that she both wants to stop him and never wants him to stop saying what's in _both_ of their hearts, because this isn’t just about her. This is about Ben, too. What he’s spent years keeping to himself. What he’s wanted- _needed_ to say for _years_. She wants him to stop shouting at Leia, wants to defend her, wants to defend Ben, wants to run and crush him in her arms, squeezing the agony from his glassy eyes with a bruising embrace. She wishes Leia would do it in her place. Wishes Han or Luke- _any_ of them would. But, like her, they're frozen in place with sorrow. 

Ben must realize the weight of his confession, because he seems to physically shrink. “Mom- please. _Please_.” There’s less anger, now, in his voice—a slight quake taking its place—as he implores Leia. “You’re her legal guardian. Shipping her off to Yavin isn’t right. It could be _dangerous._  Coruscant is her home. _We’re_ her home.”  
  
Rey shuts her eyes for a moment, tears falling. She hadn't said any of it to Leia, earlier in the diner, but she'd so badly wanted to. 

“No matter what you may think, none of us want to send Rey away,” Leia sighs. “We are _aware_ that she’s our responsibility. That she’s family. If I made the selfish decision, of course she’d remain here.” There’s a tense pause before she exhales, long and slow. “But it isn't just the Red Crescent. Rey will eventually grow scared of herself, of her abilities, if she doesn’t go. The way you did—the way you _have_ . All of this pent-up power could be as dangerous to her as it once was to you.” Leia’s  shoulders slump, and it’s like watching her shed her formal robes; dropping the diplomat to reveal the entreating mother beneath. “Remember the nightmares, Ben? The cold sweats, the fevers, the headaches? Remember how _frightened_ you were, every time you cracked a vase or shattered glass? You were scared, and that fear exhausted you- made you _angry_. I- we don’t want that for Rey.”

Rey feels a sudden flood of memories that don’t belong to her. She tries to somehow shut it out, knowing Ben wouldn’t want her to see—knowing he wouldn’t let himself slip like this if he didn’t think she was still asleep, if he wasn’t feeling so vulnerable—but it’s like pushing against a strong current, and it pulls her under. His thoughts are a deep, vibrating echo in her head.

 _I wasn’t afraid of my power_. It’s one of the first, clearest thoughts Rey’s heard through her bond with Ben since she’d been taken. _I was terrified that you hated me_ **because** _of it. That you would send me away first chance you got. You nearly did._

Leia doesn’t hear it, though. She can’t feel the emotion thrashing behind Ben’s self-control to the degree that Rey can. So Leia continues. “I am not trying to ‘pawn her off’ or abandon her. Ben-“ the look on her face is so pained. “I’m doing for her what I was too selfish to do for you. She needs a teacher—needs the peace of mind that comes with understanding and control. And she needs to do it someplace safe. I need you to see that.”

Ben spits his next words with acidic speed. “All I see is lack of negotiation. What, Luke can’t teach her here? Weekly lessons over the comm? You can’t make a monthly trip to Yavin _with_ her? There are _other options_ -"

“It’s the safest option,” Luke says. It must be the first he’s spoken since the argument broke out, because Ben and Leia’s eyes quickly latch onto him. The Jedi’s arms are crossed, eyes on his nephew. “There is only so much a politician’s guard can do for Rey if up against an organization of dark-siders. Yavin’s atmosphere is full of a bioastral chemical that effectively cloaks a force-sensitive’s signature from prying eyes in atmo. That’s why I built the new temple there.”  
  
Ben’s jaw is clenching and unclenching as his uncle continues.  
  
“If she is truly being tracked by the Red Crescent...Yavin is the safest place for her to be until she’s learned to cloak her signature on her own.”  
  
“And _you_?” Ben spits. “I know you won’t be on Yavin. You and your knights will be tracking the Red Crescent like you’d planned from the beginning. So where does that leave Rey? Abandoned on foreign terrain, _alone._ ”

Luke is still. Calm in the face of Ben’s accusations. Leia is a about to intervene when her brother lays a steady hand on her shoulder. “You’re right, Ben. I won’t be on Yavin often in the coming days. An old friend of mine will be teaching Rey in my place.”  
  
“Who-”  
  
“Ashoka Tano.”  
  
Rey knew this already, but here, the name appears to still the conversation until-

Luke drops a second bomb. “It’s true that I won’t be on Yavin. But you won’t be here in Coruscant, either. Will you, Ben.”  
  
Ben _snarls-_  
  
“...What?”

...A quiet, shattered word that breaks in Rey’s throat.   
  
Everyone’s eyes are abruptly round, wide, and on her. Everyone’s but Luke’s. He and Rey only have eyes for Ben.  
  
-Who looks trapped. Like a wide-eyed creature in a cage.

But he swivels on Luke with renewed fury in his eyes—backed into a corner with hackles raised and teeth bared. “You _knew_ she was there!”

He lunges.  
  
But Rey has always, always been faster than Ben.

She runs between them, Ben’s fury circulating through the channel—spiking her own adrenaline. She stops in front of his uncle, knowing Luke can protect himself, but _demanding_ Ben’s attention. Through the force, their shared, swirling fury makes her breathing more labored—makes her chin rise, her chest jut out, and her eyes a mirror of Ben’s rage.

He stops.

They stare for a tense few moments, feeling both each other and the adults’ wariness, orbiting the scene nervously.

The trapped beast finally surrenders under Rey’s answering anger. His shoulders drop. She can hardly see him through the blur of rising tears, but she knows he’s fixed in place--isn’t coming toward them anymore, only staring. As if she is the pointed end of a dagger, hovering over his heart.  
  
“You’re leaving,” she says. Her voice shakes.  
  
_Is that true?_ She whispers across the force.   
  
Ben takes a step toward her, arm reaching. But Rey steps away. They hold each other’s eyes as her lip wobbles and tears finally fall.

He just looks at her.  
  
_I have to, Sun Spot._  
  
Stillness descends. 

And then Rey is screeching, tears flying, as she tackles Ben to the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regarding the first half of this chap lol: I recently read an article about Episode XI using pre-shot footage of Carrie Fisher to ‘tie up loose ends’, and got so emotional about her impending absence that this chapter was suddenly rewriting itself. It’s embarrassingly self-indulgent, and honestly I don’t think it’s super in-character for Rey to behave as rationally toward Leia in the face of another imposed, life-altering separation. 
> 
> But I needed to write the beginning fluff for myself, because I still really, really miss Carrie. And god, I’m going to miss Leia. I wanted a private goodbye between Leia and Rey before plot-shit hits the fan, but I also just wanted to tell Leia “I love you and it’s going to be really hard to say goodbye.” So if this chapter made you roll your eyes or cringe, I totally get it, but it was more for myself, anyway XD 
> 
> Again thanks so much for sticking out this story. It's obviously not my top-priority, updating in a timely manner, but the story is certainly almost always on my mind, I assure you! I'm still so grateful for the comments and love--they keep this story in motion <3 Next few chapters incoming, and a TIME SKIP :O 
> 
> <3


	12. Chapter 12

Ben is so shocked by the sudden collision that his instincts don’t catch up fast enough to keep him from falling.

They land with a painful _thud_.

She scrambles to sit on top of his chest, shouting through tears and a runny nose as she pounds with her fists. “You said this wouldn’t change anything! You said you’d _always be here!_ ”

He catches her wrists. “I meant what I said!”

" _No you didn’t!_ You did _not_ mean what you said, because you won’t be here! You won’t be there! You won’t be _anywhere!_ ” Her voice is scratchy and child-like as she sobs.

It’s awful.    
  
“Rey-” his mother starts.  
  
_“Go,”_ Ben barks, voice breaking. This is between him and Rey. He doesn’t look away from Rey’s face, but he can hear the rest of his family start to shuffle back inside. _Good_ , he thinks. He can’t stand to deal with them any longer anyway.

Rey rips her wrists from his hands and just- cries.

It’s the most heart-wrenching thing Ben has ever fucking seen. Rey never cries. She sticks her chin out and bites the inside of her cheeks. Always has. This is something Ben hasn’t seen since-

Jakku.

She presses the heels of her palms into her eyes, trying to get a handle on her ragged breathing, to no avail. Every high, whistle-like whimper feels like a brick to his gut.

Because he put her there—back on Jakku. He knew this would happen; that she’d feel like she was back in that sandy hell, four and abandoned, all over again.

And it’s his fault.

“You know I don’t want to,” he starts.

“What’s that matter!” She cries. “Why even say that?!” Her hands grip the material at the front of his shirt. He stares at the tears caught in her lashes. At the shimmering red of her cheeks and nose. “You’re still leaving! They’re sending me away and I thought you would at least be _here_ , but you won’t! You’re leaving, you’re leaving, _you’re leaving!”_ She heaves. _“_ Like _everyone!”_

Ben can’t take it. He sits up, nearly unseating her as his arms hurry to crush her close.  
  
She barely resists, arms trapped between their chests, voice muffled by his shirt. “You’re the only one who can’t leave! You promised! I _need you!_ You- you promised...I need you-“ Seconds pass, measured in scratchy sobs, before she speaks again. “I don’t wanna go,” she moans. It’s such a small sound. “What if the Force turns me into someone else? What if it’s-“ she hiccups, “what if it changes me? What if I never- never get to come back?”

It’s a garbled mess, difficult to make out through her choked tears. Ben hears every word anyway, so fluent in Rey he’s sure she’s his true first language.  

“What if you forget me? Ben-“ she sniffs and it’s loud and wet and makes his own eyes and nose sting. _Forget_ her? “What if I don’t see you? What if you get too busy to visit? Wh-what if I _don’t s-”_ she heaves a quick gasp “- _see you_ …” It’s one lance after another as she dissolves again. He feels her nose crushed into his collar, her shivering spine beneath his hands, and wants to dissolve with her.

He presses himself tighter around her; arms overlapping, chin resting over her shoulder. It's always been a simple joy to hold her before; to envelope something so much smaller than him. To physically remind her that she’s safe and jealously guarded. Even at his most self-conscious, Ben had been glad for his looming build, if only for the purpose of pulling Rey close and surrounding her. It’s something he's taken for granted.

His lips are mashed tight, jaw working to keep a tidal wave of emotion locked down. Rey is _fifteen_ , he reminds himself. Drowning her in his complex maelstrom of guilt and frustration and the impending loneliness...it would too much, too unfair.

But with every quiver that wracks her body—every high, heartbreaking sob, every cold flutter of wet lashes against his collarbone—it hurts more to say nothing. All the tangled thoughts and inadequate words and burning reassurances...they ache to reach her.

Despite himself, they tumble off his tongue, desperate to hit home. “Rey,” he swallows, “forgetting you...that’s absurd. _Impossible_. You know that.” His right hand makes a soothing circle on her back; an easy, gentle circuit that takes little effort (even with her recent growth spurt, Ben’s hands are still big enough to span her back). It works just like it always has. He feels her slowly deflate. A sad half-smile tugs at his lips. If nothing else, he can take pride in how well he knows her. “I’ll visit constantly,” he soothes. _I’d visit every day if you asked me to. I’d find a way_. “I’ll hijack Dameron’s precious T-70, if I have to.”

She gives a shivery exhale in lieu of a laugh.  
  
“Rey, you’re my family. You’re...everything. To _abandon_ you-” He shakes his head. “It would hurt less to saw off my limbs.” It’s dramatic and Ben _hears_ how ridiculous it sounds, but it’s true. 

He lets out a sudden huff when Rey drops her heavy head back into his collarbone. “I hate this,” she confesses wetly. “I hate this so much- I-“ she hiccups again. “I don’t want to say goodbye-” a loud sniff, “-I love you, Ben. I love you so, _so_ much. Where are you going? Why can’t I just-“ she lets out a shivery exhale, “-come with you? I wouldn’t be any trouble. Maybe I could help….”

Ben had expected this, too—had thought he’d be firm and tell her ‘you can’t come with me, you’d be in danger’—but now, here, with her quaking and miserable in his arms...he’s tempted to say yes.

Instead, he leaves that conversation for tomorrow. “This isn’t a goodbye,” he insists softly into her hair.  
  
“It is,” she mumbles miserably. It’s a while before she adds, “Can you just-” she exhales, sniffs. “Can you say it back?” She weakly punches his midsection. “Bantha butt, say it back.”  
  
“I love you, too, Sun Spot.” _You know I do_.

“...I know.”

 

x

 

It’s mid-afternoon the next day, and the last thing Ben wants to do is help her pack.

But he’s exhausted the argument with his mother and uncle.

_“This is about Rey’s safety. You’ll see reason.”_

Has already called out his father for his big mouth.

_“I didn’t tell him anything about your plan—bastard pulled that voodoo mind stuff on me. Sorry, kid.”_

Is actively avoiding Paige, Sotna and Poe.

***Ping***

Tico: _You comm us back right now, Solo, or I swear to kriff we’ll come over there._

***Ping***

Soe: _Don’t ignore my girlfriend, you know she means it_

***Ping***

Dam _: Dyin over here, buddy. What’s the news._

And doesn't have enough 'sorry's in the galaxy to hand Rey.   
  
_"I'm still mad, but I don't really...have the energy to hold onto it. We don't have much time together before I have to take off with Luke, anyway."_  
  
He wishes so badly he could gut-punch his fucking uncle. The whole plan is proceeding ridiculously fast. It's like the man's kicked _Ben_ in the gut. 

“Ben,” Rey lightly pushes his hand away from her half-packed shoulder sack. “I won’t need that many socks.”

His thoughts halt at the sound of her voice, processing the words as he tucks another pair into a side pocket. “Sure you will.” The sound of her laugh is weak, but nice all the same. She shuffles behind him as he moves to sit on her bed, remembering the last time someone had moved out of this house.

 _“It’s normal for kids to grow up and move out of their parents’ place.”_ __  
_  
_ _“It doesn’t_ sound _normal. It sounds dumb and made-up. Doesn’t make_ any sense.”

He watches her trace a circuit around her room, carefully wrapping her ship models and ancient texts and putting them in hover boxes.  
  
So far, she only has two of the boxes totally filled, _maybe_ one box’s-worth of clothing, and that’s it. She’s always insisted she wants only what she needs, nothing more. But an entire life packed up in three boxes? It seems wrong. Rey might as well pack up the whole of Canthem House—it’ll be a shell without her, anyway.

This day would’ve come regardless, someday, but Ben feels cheated. He should’ve had more time to prepare himself. She should’ve had more options. The circumstances should’ve been bitter-sweet, and not so _fucking_ dire.  
  
Chewie shuffles in, head hung heavy. He bleats something soft and low.  
  
Rey’s head snaps away from her closet to look at the wookie, eyes wide. She doesn’t tear up, but she looks heartbroken as she tosses a shirt into a box and hustles into the wookie’s fuzzy arms.  
  
_So he’s heard the news._  
  
As Ben watches them, all he can think is, _Without Rey, ‘home’ is a fucking joke and we all know it._

 

x

  
  
  
  
The next morning, they're both puffy-eyed and look _staggeringly_ exhausted. It hurts Leia to see.

Rey is still a good two heads shorter than Ben, but he somehow looks like the smaller of the two, clutching Rey’s hand as they make their way toward the gathered party. Of the two of them, Leia knows that Rey is stronger than Ben in the face of change. Always has been; where Ben often seems to be vibrating out of his own skin, Rey is steady and firm. Leia watches her face the mouth of Luke’s ship and the people waiting beneath it with a grim sadness.  
  
It’s not a large send-off party—just the family, the Tico sisters, Poe, and Ludd—but Leia thinks it’s everyone Rey would’ve wanted there.  
  
Ben lets go of her hand and joins Luke by the ship’s ramp, clearly intent to see her off to the very last possible moment, and Rey makes her rounds.

She runs into the center of the small crowd that Ludd, Rose and Paige have made. Ludd’s blowhole is sputtering with emotion as Rey reaches up on tiptoes to grab the Herglic’s head and dig her forehead into theirs. It’s a deeply personal gesture in Herglic culture, one Ludd seems wholly unprepared for. “I’ll miss you, Ludd.” Rey sniffs. “When I visit I want to spend a whole week with you in ‘Yard 82.”  
  
The Herglic lets out a burbled laugh, mirroring Rey’s gentle grip on her head. “I’ll help you build your Lightsaber. You’ll need supervision for that.” Rey nods, grinning as they tug each other into an embrace. Ludd lets her go with a humorous squeak from their blowhole that makes Rey laugh— _really_ laugh, for likely the first time in three days.

Rose and Paige hold onto Rey the longest, as if they’re a small puzzle that is losing its third, vital piece. Rose is mumbling too quietly into Rey’s collar for Leia to overhear what she’s saying, but Leia can guess. Paige has a hand on both of the girls’ backs, trying to soothe them both at the same time, before giving them a moment and walking over to Ben.

It fills Leia’s heart to bursting—watching Paige place a comforting hand on Ben’s lower back. She knows no one on this landing pad is hurting as intensely as her son. It’s a relief that Leia isn’t the only one to notice. Although usually uncomfortable with such gestures, Ben lets Paige lean her head on his shoulder and soothe him as they watch the girls.  
  
After Rose and Rey finally part with watery smiles, Rey makes a beeline for Chewie, barreling into the oversized mass of fluff like she has for the last eight years. Chewie bends himself over her to pull her close, bleating something sorrowful in shyriiwook.  
  
Rey kisses his furry cheek and hugs him tight. “I’ll miss you too, big bear.”  
  
And then she’s turning and looking at Han with big, shining eyes and a wobbling lip that trembles so hard Leia feels it in her chest like an earthquake. Han seems equally unbalanced at the sight. He puts on a sad little half-smile and pulls her into his arms by the back of her head. “Don’t cry, Speck, you’ll be seein’ plenty of my ugly mug.”  
  
Rey manages a wet, squeaky, “Will I?”  
  
“Yeah, kid, a’course you will. I’ll bring souvenirs, like I always do. I still owe you that speeder bike, don’t I?”  
  
Rey’s forehead is buried in Han’s chest like it’s the first place she felt truly safe, and Leia realizes it probably is.  
  
Next is Poe, and he looks easily as miserable as the red-faced, cried-out girl running toward him.  
  
She’s barely reached him before he scoops her up into his arms. She has hers around his neck in a vice-tight grip, looping her legs around his midsection and letting herself cry anew into his shoulder as he supports her easily. Leia can tell Poe is crying, too, and it’s heartbreaking to be witness to: Poe Dameron—ever-cocksure and steady—crumbling.

“You’ll be in touch, right?” It’s one of the more vulnerable things Leia’s ever heard Poe say, in all her years knowing him. Almost like he’s the one afraid to be forgotten. Rey nods hard into his neck.  
  
“You’ll visit me?” Rey asks thickly.

“Of _course,”_ hehuffs, gripping her harder. “Big brother Poe’s gonna visit so much you’ll be begging him to _leave._ ”    
  
Rey lifts her face away to look into Poe’s with a teary grin. “ _Never_.”  
  
Then Rey’s glistening eyes fall on Leia, and finally, she has an arm-full of Rey all to herself.

Where, before, she had found a sad ache, watching Rey with the others, Leia feels, now, like there’s a knife in her chest—slashing at her insides as Rey settles in her arms.  
  
Rey may not know it, but she’s as much Leia’s daughter as she is anyone’s, goddamnit. Leia holds the girls’ tear-tracked cheeks between her hands, trying to memorize it like the sappy mother she is. Such a beautiful girl, inside and out; such warmth spilling out of stained-glass, hazel eyes. Sun-tanned skin a glowing shade of a life lived boldly. Even her perfect little nose seems to lend character to the fierce spirit beneath it all.    
  
“My brother thinks he’s taking you to your new home.” She says. “He’s full of shit. _This_ is your home, Rey. Your family. We’ll be here.” And she can’t help it, she leans her forehead in, Rey laughing a little and meeting her halfway, like they’ve always done. “I love you, sweetheart.”  
  
Rey is crying unabashedly in her arms, and Leia cries, too. “I’m gonna comm you, probably too much,” Rey chokingly admits. “Just to-” she inhales sharply, trying to school her emotions with little success, “just to hear your voice.”  
  
Leia lets out a watery laugh, nodding. “I’ll be just as eager to hear yours, promise.” They close their eyes and feel each other’s warmth through the force, where they’ve memorized each other’s signatures. “May the force be with you,” Leia whispers.  
  
Rey’s lips pull into a wobbly smile. “May the force be with you.”

When Rey steps out of her arms, Leia wants to pull her back and beg her to stay. She’s never pretended to be anything less than selfish, when it comes to Rey and Ben, but this, she knows, has little to do with her in the first place.  
  
Her son has already had his goodbye, but Leia senses an inevitable part 2 that she is unwilling to interrupt. She takes her husband’s hand, who responds with a sad, understanding smile, and they huddle everyone together to leave Rey with her final, hardest, farewell.

  
  
x

 

  
Rey hates this all so much. She hates it so much and she doesn't know what to do with all of it because she also has so much _love_. For these people; her family and friends. The conflicting feelings are awful. The goodbyes are awful.  
  
“That was _awful_ ,” she mumbles, almost unintelligible, into Ben’s shirt, face squished into his chest.  
  
“You’ve made close friends here,” he replies lowly. She’s not even holding Ben—just collapsed forward in a sloppy, planking sort of way, arms dangling like pendulums between them as he rubs her back. “Everyone is going to miss you.”  
  
“Can’t you just- come with us?” She tries one last time, knowing it’s useless but pleading all the same. “Just for- a year? Or something?”  
  
She feels Ben laugh, deep and rich. She closes her eyes, cherishing the feeling of the rumble as much as the sound. “Tempting.”  
  
She twists her head until it’s her chin resting on his chest instead of her cheek. “Is it?”  
  
“Not really.”  
  
Rey lazily slaps his hip, “ass.”

Another deep laugh and then Ben is on one knee, looking up into her face with his big brown eyes.

...Kriff.

 _Kriff_.

She was so sure she had no tears left.  
  
“I _will_ visit.” He stresses. “I’ll come whenever you want. Probably even when you don’t.” His eyebrows are lifted in that way that makes him look like the big-eyed, gawky teenager she’d first met; as gentle then as he is now. His eyes don’t  settle on just one of hers, they never do—Ben is always trying to look into both.  
  
Her lip wobbles all over again, eyes raw and itchy. “What if I just want to comm you to talk?”  
  
He smiles her favorite smile—the awkward one that pulls up to reveal some of his teeth—the one that reaches his eyes, always. “Sure.”  
  
“Just to tell you about my day?”  
  
“‘Course.”  
  
“Just to ask you about yours?”  
  
“That’s fine.”  
  
“Just to talk about what I’ve learned?”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“J-” she sniffs, and she feels her face crumble miserably. “Just to hear your voice when I miss you?”    
  
Her favorite smile is gone, and she brings a shaking hand up to wipe away one of Ben’s tears even though she can barely see through her own. “Absolutely,” he chokes.  
  
They embrace for a long, long time.  
  
Ben doesn’t leave the pad—and Rey doesn’t leave the window port—until Luke’s broken atmo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My god this chapter took a literal month of goddamned editing. I'm so sorry. I wanted to add so much more to it, too--it STILL feels incomplete. If I wind up adding scenes later, I apologize ahead of time and WILL inform you in the following chapter notes lmao. As always, your comments keep this fic alive. Thank you so much for being here <3


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I realized a few of you guys are reading this for a second or third time (<3 I love you so much) and are confused about some of the chapters that you'd previously read and are now "missing" -- I'm so sorry for the confusion! I moved those chapters to the companion fic to this one, "Sun Spots Outtakes." 
> 
> As heavily edited as this work is, it's still done chap-by-chap and is my first ever fic, so it's really choppy and sometimes there are holes I don't see even after months of editing one chapter lol. The outtakes are an easier way for me to organize chapters that follow and move the plot versus chapters that don't (i.e. "Outtakes" lol) THANK YOU AND MY BAD <3

* * *

  
3 years later

* * *

  
  
  
  
  
SHIT!

Branch.

He’s ducking, he’s running- OW, **_FUCK-!_**  
  
Branch.  
  
Ben _hates_ jungles. He ranks Ithor at the top of his growing list of “planets that fucking suck." Every inch of it is covered in dense, swampy wilderness that is actively trying to suffocate and maim him.  
  
_“DO YOU SEE HIM?!”_ He bellows over his shoulder.  
  
_“LITTLE BUSY, SON!”_ Han hollers back, precisely one nanosecond before another deadly projectile whizzes past Ben’s ear.  
  
It startles him into running faster, keeping the corner of his eye on his father who, well past his peak running-from-deadly-projectile days, is somehow _ahead_ of Ben.     
  
“I THOUGHT YOU SAID CHEWIE WAS HOVERING IN THE _SOUTH MARSH!”_

Han just makes a strangled groaning sound.  
  
Helpful.

These days, Ben has resigned himself to the hassles of traveling with a galactically despised smuggler. On nearly every planet they’ve visited these last few years, _someone_ has it out for Han Solo. So it’s really Ben’s fault--he should’ve _assumed_ he’d be running for his life in a dense marsh on a windy tuesday in an Ithorian swamp, where the locals had apparently never forgotten “The Smuggler and His Moody Wookie Friend Who Stole Our Chief’s Most Treasured Family Relic.” Really. It’s Ben’s fault. He should’ve guessed.  
  
Finally, thank _kriff_ , they hear the familiar sputter of rusted pulsors _._  
  
Chewie glides overhead, pulling a U-turn as the ramp lowers a foot or two off of the jungle floor. Ben and Han duck and weave until they can propel themselves onto the ramp, just as Chewie starts to ascend again.  
  
The ramp closes behind them and they can hear the _tink thunk thud_ of arrows striking the Falcon door, his dad already grumbling about the dents and divots.  
  
“Because she’s so _pristine_ otherwise,” Ben huffs, still catching his breath.  
  
Han just smirks, eyes sparkling in that way they only do after a brush with death. (It hadn’t taken Ben longer than a few months into this mission to realize his father only ever has that sparkle when he’s running for his life from something--including his own family. It's thanks solely to Rey's latest cross-galactic observation that Han's "never seemed happier" and that it "must be the father-son trip he's always wanted," that, when Han reaches over to clap his son on the shoulder, Ben just shakes his head at his old man.) Ben runs a hand through his wind-whipped hair as they rise together to head to the cockpit, just as the falcon soars over the Mother Jungle marsh.  
  
Moody Wookie Friend bellows at them.  
  
“Yeah, Chew, we got the guy,” Han reports.  
  
The fuzzy pilot turns his head to tip it questioningly at Ben, who shrugs. “Wasn’t hiding himself very well. Found him drunk and half passed-out in the middle of the Bafforr Bazaar.”

Han is smirking. “Even handed over a few other names for us. Didn’t he, Ben.”  
  
His son already has his datapad out, searching the datafiles he and his mother have exchanged for any crossover.  
  
“29 years and I _still_ can’t compete with the damn holonet,” Han sighs, plopping himself in the pilot’s seat. “Alright, crew. Next stop: Yavin.”

Ben groans.

His father and uncle start in on their methodical switch-flipping, preparing to leave atmo. “We’re not skipping out on the kid’s nameday, Ben.”

“Why not? It’s not his real nameday. Rey made it up for him.”

“Because she would have our hides if we ditched.”

Ben clenches his jaw, testy from the escape they _barely_ managed (not to mention the frustratingly useless information the drunken ex-darksider spilled) and itching to talk about literally _anything_ else.

Han turns in his chair to peek up at Ben. “What, you don’t wanna see her?”

“Of course I want to see _her_ ,” Ben snaps. (He can never seem to control his childish petulance when it comes to his father. The bastard brings it out in him.)

Han chuckles. “‘Least you could do is ask how his back is doing.”

Ben grumbles a heatless “fuck off,” and makes his way back to the bunks with Han’s gravelly chuckle trailing after him. A familiar exchange, by now. Borderline comforting.

He updates his log--crosses out another name on the list of Red Crescent members (past and present, apparently) with vindictive precision, filing the additional information he’d gained to send to his mother--before heading back across the galley to scrub marsh muck from his hair.

He’s fresh out of the shower when his comm goes off. He sees her name flash across the screen and briefly considers tossing it away.

But it’s Rey. And he’s a fucking sucker. So he answers. “What do you want.”

Despite his petulance, the beaming blue holo is a sight for sore eyes. Every tensed muscle the shower missed loosens at the pixelated visage of her squinty-smile. _Fucking sucker,_ he chastises himself _._

She seems older with every holocall.  
  
19, now.   
  
And it shows; her features sharper, defined where they’d once been round. She still keeps her hair relatively short, but where there used to be buns, now it’s almost always in a half up-do, the remaining brown tresses kissing her shoulders in an attractively mature fashion. Hell, even her _lashes_ seem longer. Is that supposed to happen? Ben assumes it’s a Rey thing.

Simple truth is; Rey is a beautiful girl. It’s always been true, but now it’s….now, seeing her-

“Kriff off,” she laughs. “You _know_ what I want.” Kriff he loves her laugh. Even shrouded in static, it’s his favorite sound.

Ben sighs and sets the holo on his bunk so he can sit back and use both hands to dry his hair. He grumbles, words purposely muffled by the towel. He feels a chill breeze prickle his wet, naked torso as Han whooshes past the bunks with a nosy, “Hey, Speck! See you soon!”

Ben hears Rey clear her throat before hollering a quick “see you soon!” right back. There’s a short pause that has Ben lowering his towel to glance at holoRey. She looks flushed. (Likely happy to have caught a guest appearance from her elusive smuggler guardian. She always gets absurdly happy when Han calls her ‘Speck’.) “So I _will_ see you soon,” she confirms, smiling.

Ben goes back to drying his hair with a petulant grunt.  
  
“Come _on_ ,” she whines, laughter still in her voice. “You owe him after that sparring ‘ _accident’_ .” She puts air quotes around the word, as if it wasn’t. (It _was_ , damnit.)

He huffs. “Dameron still coming?”

“Considering he’s the one who rescued and _named_ Finn?”

“Nineteen doesn’t suit you. All attitude, these days.”

“ _Yes_ Poe is coming,” Rey laughs. _She’s so happy, these days,_ he thinks. If nothing else, he’s grateful for that. “Rose is catching a ride with him, too.”

“Paige?”

The joy drains a little from her face. “Still away on that reconnaissance mission Leia mentioned last month. That’s why I insisted Rose come. I think she could use the distraction.”

Ben hasn’t been as good as he’d promised to be at keeping up with Paige, but he and Sotna exchange fairly consistent holos, so he’d known about the mission. The news that Paige had to ‘go dark’ for it had made even Ben wary. Makes him wish his mother was more forthcoming about the mission’s details.  
  
But he doesn’t want to worry Rey any more than she already does. “Sounds like a party.”

“It _will_ be if you, Han, and Chewie come.”

Ben fiddles with his datapad for something to do with his hands.

She sighs. “Ben, I know you and Finn aren’t- best friends. But he _is_ mine, and it would mean a lot to me if you came.”

His eye twitches.  
  
_There it is,_ he thinks. _There’s the reason she’s so happy these days._ The reason he doesn’t want to go: an ex-stormtrooper-shaped thorn in Ben’s side.

FN-2187. Or, as Poe had appointed him, ‘Finn.’

Rationally, Ben knows Finn is decent; a good friend to Rey, respectful to Ben’s parents, easily spooked by but otherwise kind to Chewie, and Dameron’s number one fan. Shit, the man is even on his _uncle’s_ good side, since moving to Yavin.

Everyone likes Finn.

...Especially Rey.  
  
And the stupid _fucking_ thing is, Ben gets it. Because Rey and Finn are similar. Both fundamentally good. It isn’t a decision they have to make every morning when they wake up or every time they open their mouths to speak. No one has to teach or _influence_ them to be good—it’s just who they are.

When they’re together...that aura is like a wall.

And Ben is standing on the outside of it.  
  
The smallest, loneliest, pre-Rey parts of Ben _desperately_ want to be on the inside, terrified of the possibility that he may never be.    
  
“I’ll be there.”  
  
Rey makes that soft face she always makes when he surrenders his attitude for her sake. “Thanks, Ben. Finn’s excited for a rematch.”  
  
Ben just grunts. _Not doing this for him._  

 

* * *

2 ½ years prior

* * *

 

 

_Leia watches them from her place beside Ben, the two of them walking arm-in-arm behind the young pair bouncing ahead on the jungle path._

_She likes Finn._  
  
_He and Rey are clear reflections of each other; two kids who’ve come to Yavin seeking growth and an escape. A safe place to reinvent themselves._  
  
_“What-_ Rey _-! Put that down! You don’t know if it’s poisonous or not!” The boy trips over himself to rush closer._

 _Rey’s answering laugh is bubbly and carefree. It’s the first time Leia’s heard it since Rey had left Coruscant, almost eight months ago. She can see the squinty-twinkle in the girl’s eyes when she turns to smile at him. It’s a relief._  
  
_“I do too know, worry-wart,” Rey dismisses in a very sixteen-year-old kind of way, letting her free hand trace the fauna that brushes her thigh as they meander. “It’s axxathumeus. ‘Soka puts it in your beloved pasta.”_  
  
_“You sure about that?” Finn leans over her shoulder to scowl at the offending herb. Leia is surprised by how comfortable they seem—watching like a hawk as he takes Rey’s hand in his to further inspect._

 _“Yes,” Rey laughs, before shoving it in his face. “Taste it.”_  
  
_Ever since the move, Rey had become more reserved. More serious and withdrawn. Lacking that wild radiance she’d carried growing up. Ben’s noticed, too. They all have, of course, but her son- her son has run himself in circles, these last few months. Working hard to balance his time with Rey, and his self-appointed mission to keep her safe, one Red Crescent Member at a time._  
  
_Leia knows how difficult it’s been on the both of them, being apart. Hell, she isn’t a huge fan of the separation, herself. Having a family so spread out...it’s difficult._

 _Though now, here, with Finn...Rey seems light as air. Her force signature, too, is stronger somehow. She seems to laugh constantly around this boy. Teasing and playful. More like the child Leia remembers._  
  
_Still, the last person Leia remembers Rey attaching herself to this quickly…._

 _“They've only known each other a few weeks?”_  
  
_“Two,” her son sighs._  
  
_“Doesn’t look like it.” Leia hears a huff and knows without looking that he’s sulking. “Ben, sweetheart, don’t be jealous.”_  
  
_That manages to avert his attention, at least, as he glares down at her. Leia smirks._

 _“I’m not jealous,_ mother _.” Leia snickers. He only calls her ‘mother’ like that when he’s defensive. “Kid’s a flake,” Ben says. “If he could abandon the only life he knew so quickly, who’s to say he won’t up and leave this planet as soon as he gets antsy.” Leia suppresses an eye-roll. Not that Ben’s paying her any attention—his narrowed eyes drawn helplessly back to the pair ahead. “Who’s to say he won’t up and ditch Rey if someone comes looking for him.”_  
  
_“You’re only upset that she’s taken to him so fast,” Leia snorts, jumping at the chance to tease her stiff, stubborn boy. “Rey’s never been some helpless duckling.”_  
  
_“Not ‘helpless’, but she gets too deeply attached, too fast. She sets herself up to be disappointed.”_  
  
_Leia shakes her head with a smile and continues to observe the bouncing pair ahead. Rey does seem a bit duckling-like; hands behind her back as she pads happily alongside her new friend. “She may set herself up for heartbreak, getting attached. As we all do. But our girl...she inspires loyalty.” Leia beams. “Don’t you think?”_  
  
_Ben makes another sulky noise at the back of his throat. But he doesn’t deny it._

 _“-hasn’t taught you that trick yet?” They overhear Rey ask._  
  
_“I thought we weren’t learning that until we mastered meditation?”_  
  
_Rey smirks at her friend, all cocksure confidence. “I must be advanced.”_

 _Such a Solo thing to say, Leia thinks, amused._  
  
_Finn lightly shoves Rey off the path. “Advanced_ kunghead,  _maybe._ _”_  
  
_They laugh, Rey shoves him back, and then they’re chasing after one another down the path like children playing tag. With her laugh bright as the light striking the auburn strands in her hair, Rey looks every bit the sixteen-year-old girl she’s meant to be._  
  
_When Leia sneaks a peek up at her son, he looks like he’s swallowed a Thunian wart-hornet._  
  
_She laughs and sneaks a warm hand under his arm to squeeze it affectionately. “Jealousy will eat you alive, sweetheart. You’ve been that girl’s Number One since she was six. A fast friend isn’t going to usurp a soul bond.”_  
  
_She hears him grumble, but can feel his tense muscles loosen beneath her hand. He knows it’s true. She knows he knows it’s true, but he’s a stubborn Organa. And Organas are nothing if not territorial. She can’t help but find it hopelessly endearing._  
  
_"I worry, too, you know," Leia says._  
  
_Ben remains quiet. The dirt crunches beneath their feet. The brush around them rustles as a ship flies just overhead. Han. Leia wants to sigh--Ben never has enough time on Yavin, these days._ It's not good for him, _she can't help but think._  
  
_"That's your ride."_  
  
_"Rey will be disappointed we have to turn around so fast. She wanted to sleep in the Falcon another night."_  
  
_"Of course she'll be disappointed. Goodbyes are her greatest fear." Mother and son watch Rey chase her new friend with heavy hearts. "I'm grateful for Finn. He'll be here for her when we can't be."_  
  
_"Don't say it like_ that _," Ben hisses, like he's been lashed on the back. "We're here every chance we get, aren't we?"_  
  
_Leia says nothing for a while. They just watch. Until, finally, she insists softly, "you can be grateful for him, too, Ben. That's what love is. Difficult and selfless."_ Why do you think I'm so glad that you have Rey?   
  
_They walk a little further before hearing the pair ahead start to circle back to meet the landing Falcon._  
  
_“Well, love is a bitch and that punk is short,” her son grunts._  
  
_Leia laughs nearly the entirely way back to the temple._

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Damn, gotta be honest I'm still not entirely satisfied with this chapter, either. It's obviously super transitional, but idk. I'm sorry if it's not as emotionally jam-packed or fulfilling as the last one was (at least for me to write)! Again, thanks for your comments and your support and TEARS. It sounds a little twisted to say "I love that I made you cry!" But it makes me so happy that you were so moved!! <3 Thank you so much, guys. This fic is nothing without it's exceptional audience.


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